Jamison’s Garrett Lee on Adaptive Reuse in L.A.

It’s no secret that Southern California has a housing affordability and availability crisis — a fact only made worse by the wildfires that destroyed thousands of structures and killed 29 people earlier this year. Enter Jamison Properties, a Los Angeles-based developer at the tip of the spear of office-to-residential conversion projects in the region. 

The firm, founded in 1995 by David Y. Lee, manages a portfolio of some 18 million square feet and has completed seven adaptive reuse projects in the city since 2013, with another three under construction, a fourth set to begin within the next few months, and several others in the pipeline. 

With office vacancy sitting at nearly 24 percent across Greater L.A., and 33.3 percent in Downtown L.A. alone, according to recent figures from CBRE (CBRE), Jamison believes that converting certain office properties into residences is not only a good opportunity, but a cost-effective, more environmentally friendly, and less-invasive way to help alleviate the region’s housing dilemma. 

Commercial Observer sat down with Jamison Properties President Garrett Lee to discuss the developer’s approach to adaptive reuse, what it has learned after more than a decade of conversions, the unique challenges posed by such projects, and what the city can do to support the viability of future conversion projects.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: Let’s start with Jamison’s interest in adaptive reuse projects — how did that start?

Garrett Lee: We started as a commercial office real estate company. Jamison historically only focused on commercial office and retail. So that’s been the main part of our business from inception. 

But once the housing shortage came along, there became a big need for development … especially paired with the office vacancy that arose from the Great Recession (in the late 2000s). So we thought it was a perfect formula to take a vacant office building and convert it to residential, which was much needed at the time, and definitely is even more so today. It was sort of a combination of falling office occupancy after the recession, similar to today after [the pandemic], and then this rise in the need for housing in the city.

Jamison at the end of last year began construction on its 10th conversion project, the 13-story tower at 3325 Wilshire Boulevard in Koreatown, and will soon begin its 11th project at 3550 Wilshire Boulevard. What lessons has the firm learned about the conversion process from its first project (The Westmore, which opened in 2013 with 127 units) to now? 

We learn with every project that we’ve done. It’s important to have the right contractor with experience on this product type, because it’s such a unique building type compared to ground-up construction.

In the city of L.A., structural retrofit is a large component of adaptive reuse since most projects might require some sort of retrofit. So taking that into consideration on the engineering, cost, and construction sides is one of the most important things. 

Re-utilizing as much as you can within the building is also key. A lot of people, when they think about a conversion, they almost look at it as new construction. You know, change the curtain wall — and maybe sometimes it makes sense to do that, depending on the location of the building. But what we’ve found is reusing as much as you can that’s existing, that’s in good condition, is key for both cost and schedule on an adaptive use. 

Tell us about the unique obstacles associated with these kinds of conversion projects, especially compared with developing housing from the ground up. What challenges stick out to you the most?

Unforeseen conditions are always a challenge, especially when it’s structural. You can plan as much as you want, and rely on existing documentation as much as you can. But no matter what, once everything’s opened up, you always find something that’s not exactly as it shows on the drawings. 

And being nimble, or having a contractor that’s nimble and able to find solutions around those issues, and make quick design decisions to solve those issues is really important to keeping a schedule for adaptive reuse. So you have to be able to adapt and pivot. The more pre-planning and pre-construction you can do, the better chances you have to be able to to ride through those obstacles.

On the flip side, are there certain things about conversions that other people may view as challenges from the outside looking in, but actually aren’t as big of a deal?

I think the biggest misconception, or something that’s hard to visualize, is people think that these projects are drastically different when completed from an apartment building that was built ground-up. But in actuality, when the project’s finished, because the building is being gutted and rebuilt, including a lot of the MEP [mechanical, electrical and plumbing], it really feels exactly like a new construction apartment building when it’s done. There’s not much difference even on the construction side, because we’re essentially demolishing everything and then building new within this existing structure and enclosure.

A lot of these buildings are high-rise, so you also get the benefit of more glass from the existing [building] and nice views out, and also great location, since a lot of these buildings are in core office areas that’re right on public transit, in dense urban areas with a lot of amenities. A lot of parking as well, since a lot of the office buildings were built with enough parking to support the offices, so you typically get a lot of parking baked in at little or no construction costs to the project compared to ground up.

Another important point about adaptive reuse is that every building is unique and different. It’s not like ground-up where you can kind of design the same building and repeat it. Every building is unique on its own, and needs to be studied and analyzed in terms of, what specific structure or MEP or different qualities it has. But in general, you do get a lot of cost savings due to the existing infrastructure that’s already there.

There are currently about 4,400 units from conversion projects currently in the pipeline across L.A.. In New York it’s roughly double that, and there’s several more thousand in D.C. in the pipeline as well. Why do you think that is?

Part of it could be the fact that the citywide adaptive reuse ordinance hasn’t been approved yet. 

So right now, adaptive reuse is only by-right in certain specific areas, like Downtown, Koreatown and Hollywood. They’re currently working on expanding it citywide to be by-right, whereas today you would need an entitlement in order to convert if you’re not in one of those areas. So I think once the citywide gets approved, hopefully in May, it’s going to really open up the market and provide more opportunity to do conversions throughout the entire city by including all these other areas.

There is obviously an ongoing housing crisis in Southern California, made only worse by the wildfires. What is adaptive reuse’s role in mitigating that crisis? 

Much of it depends on the city and how much they’re going to help and support these projects in terms of new codes, whether it’s the zoning code that’s already in play, or breaks on fire and life safety and structure, or even fees, like permit fees or taxes. 

There hasn’t been much support, to be honest, other than from city planning, so a large portion of it depends on whether there will be any incentives or support from the city to help these types of projects. But I think the potential is enormous. 

If you just think about how much empty office there is in L.A. that’s not being used, and then how much housing we need — it just makes perfect sense that we should be able to do this. 

If you look at Downtown L.A. — because Downtown was the first to become by-right for adaptive reuse conversions in 1999 — [the city] cited in that first wave 12,000 units that were created back then. This is the early 2000s, and I think a large part of it was that it was just a lot easier back then in terms of construction costs, and codes to get those projects done.

Once the citywide ordinance does take effect, Jamison is really well positioned to take advantage of the opportunity. Much of that activity is focused in Koreatown and Downtown right now, but does Jamison have plans to expand that activity to other parts of the city?

It definitely opens the door up to areas that are not currently allowed, like West Los Angeles, Miracle Mile, even like Westlake right outside Downtown. So we already have some opportunities that we’re thinking about that would be more easily convertible after the citywide is approved.

There’s been a lot of bad happening in L.A. lately, with the fires and budget deficit and all that. But L.A. is an extremely resilient city. It has a huge need for housing. It’s a cultural hub, especially with the Olympics coming up. It’s always going to be a powerhouse. And so I think this type of investment into adaptive reuse conversion just makes perfect sense from a housing development standpoint, just given the costs and the opportunities here.

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.