Mitsui Fudosan’s 50-Story Apartment Tower Clears LA Planning Commission
By Greg Cornfield July 14, 2023 3:35 pm
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A new 50-story apartment building is set to rise in Los Angeles and add another strip to the Downtown skyline.
The L.A. City Planning Commission on Thursday approved Mitsui Fudosan America’s plan to build the tower in place of a parking garage, according to Urbanize. The commission also rejected appeals from labor and construction unions, as well as Digital Realty, a real estate investment trust that’s planning to build a 13-story data center nearby.
The proposed 562,700-square-foot development still needs to be approved by the City Council and its planning committee. A vote on the project has not been scheduled.
The Gensler-designed project will feature 580 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units and a series of amenity decks for residents, as well as 7,500 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and 640 parking spaces. It will rise along the north side of Eighth Street between Grand Avenue to the east and Hope Street to the west — hence the name: 8th, Grand & Hope.
The apartment vacancy rate in Downtown L.A. trended higher in the early months of 2023 and was at 6.3 percent, according to a Northmarq report.
Asking rents fell 1.9 percent to $2,573 per month, marking the first quarterly decline in two years. But that’s still up 8.6 percent over the previous 12 months.
“Multifamily development will gain momentum in the coming periods with more than 3,500 units slated to come online in 2023,” Northmarq said in the report. “As construction activity ramps up, vacancy will push higher; the rate is forecast to rise 70 basis points in 2023 to 6.5 percent. Asking rents are projected to increase 1.5 percent to roughly $2,660 per month.”
Mitsui Fudosan is also nearly finished building the 8th & Figueroa luxury apartment tower two blocks to the west, according to Urbanize.
Gregory Cornfield can be reached at gcornfield@commercialobserver.com.
