Jaime Lee

Jaime Lee was in Paris during this summer’s Olympiad, and it wasn’t for sightseeing necessarily. She is on the organizing committee for the 2028 L.A. Olympics and Paralympics, and collected tips from the French on how to organize those Games — in particular, how to better utilize the L.A. region’s transit system and to foster volunteers to advise visitors.

The committee position is the sort of prominence that comes from being among L.A.’s largest multifamily owners and developers. (She’s also a University of Southern California trustee, among other civic and industry postings.) 

The 30-year-old, family-owned Jamison Realty that Lee has run since 2007 has a portfolio of more than 6,360 apartments with some 2,000 more under construction — all in L.A., with a particular emphasis on Koreatown, where Jamison is headquartered. For instance, the company this summer wrapped construction on Opus, a twin-tiered high-rise at 3545 Wilshire Boulevard with 428 units. It’s about 40 percent leased, Lee said in early September. 

While Opus was a ground-up project, Lee’s Jamison is perhaps most well known for office-to-residential conversions. About 1,600 units in its current portfolio are the fruits of seven such projects. 

“We do it because our existing office buildings are so centrally located in the city in these dense urban environments that really, really need more moderate-income housing,” she said. (Asked if the company had any interest in an office project, Lee replied: “To build? No.” She added that the company does still own and manage its “legacy office assets.”) 

Jamison has other projects planned, including conversions. All come amid higher building and financing costs, and all are aimed at satiating an appetite for housing in an L.A. region starved for the stuff. The city’s housing starts are at a 12-year low, Lee said. 

“At a time when everyone is sounding the alarm of this desperate need for housing at every level,” she said, “we are at our lowest construction starts.”