Jaime Lee

Dr. David Lee acquired several office buildings in Koreatown in the early 1990s, in the wake of the Rodney King riots. His daughter, Jaime Lee, and her brothers Phill and Garrett, have transformed their father’s commercial portfolio into a series of residential buildings. 

One of those properties, the 23-story, $300 million Kurve, opened in October with 644 rental apartments, 1,100 parking spots, a pool and a one-acre rooftop park. Another is 900 South Vermont Avenue, a new six-story, 193-unit building that recently launched leasing. 

Jamison Realty is also wrapping up construction on several Koreatown projects, including Gemma, a 13-story, 206-unit conversion of a former office building and parking garage at 3540 Wilshire Boulevard, and Nexen, a seven-story, 228-unit ground-up residential building at 2938-2972 West Seventh Street. In September, it broke ground on an eight-story, 230-unit development at 800 South Western Avenue, which will involve rehabilitating a 1930s parking garage into a food hall, apartments, parking and residential amenity spaces. 

Overall, Jamison owns nearly 4,000 apartments, with 2,100 units under construction and another 4,000 in the pipeline. 

It has also traded a few properties during COVID. In July, the company sold two apartment buildings and one development site on Mariposa Avenue in Koreatown to San Francisco-based Prana Investments for $24 million, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported. 

Twenty months into the pandemic, Lee said the residential market in L.A. was better than it had been in 2019.

“Clearly people have come back to L.A.,” she said. “It took us until late spring to really see the tide turn as far as the excitement and leasing velocity to really pick up. Now we’ve got the best portfolio occupancies we’ve ever had. We’re above pre-pandemic rents and [occupancy] levels. “Occupancy has come back and rental growth has come back and there’s just extremely high demand for new and amenitized multifamily in the heart of the city.” — R.B.R.