Commercial real estate firm Hughes Marino recently purchased the former offices of San Diego Magazine at 1450 Front St., at the entrance to Little Italy, for $1.8 million.

“After calling downtown home to our team for over 20 years, we saw this as an opportunity to build a new headquarters for the company that we will enjoy for decades to come,” said Jason Hughes, president of Hughes Marino. “With Front Street being the gateway to downtown from the I-5, renovating this building is not only great for our team but it’s also great for downtown too.”

During the next six months, the company plans an undertake an innovative transformation, both inside and out, that will take the building from its currently dated 1980s design into a classic brick exterior with dramatic steel and expanded glass details.

With a completion date of December 2011, the new building more than doubles the firm’s existing space to 12,000 square feet and will include a state-of-the-art gym, billiards room, putting green, large entertainment area, multiple conference rooms and media rooms, gourmet kitchen, solar panels on the roof — and it is expected to be LEED-certified.

Upstairs, the perimeter will be lined with offices — with an open atrium looking down onto the ground floor “living room” — all drenched in light from the multiple skylights and barrel-vaulted, truss-laced raised ceiling.

Hughes Marino’s in-house construction management team, and the firm’s LEED-certified specialists, Dean Petersen and Steven Gorup, are handling LEED certification and construction for the extensive renovation.