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A FINE MULTIFAMILY
PEDIGREE
Los Angeles area developers prove that ritzy and rental
do mix.
Brian A. Lee
Judging by several of the multifamily projects currently underway
in and around the City of Angels, one might think that L.A.
now stands for luxury apartments. Companies like Projects West
Construction and J.H. Snyder Company have taken advantage of
prime real estate opportunities to bring a touch of Versailles
to the land of Versace. And the beneficiaries are multifamily
tenants and the proponents of Los Angeles’ revitalization.
A Multifamily Mix
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| The Crescent, an 88-unit apartment complex being developed
by J.H. Snyder Company, will be the first multifamily offering built in
Beverly Hills, California, in 21 years. |
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The J.H. Snyder Company has returned to multifamily development
with style. Jerry Snyder, founding partner of the Los Angeles-based
company, estimates that he has built around 40,000 apartment
units in his career, but lately his company had focused on retail
and office properties. All that has changed as Snyder returns
to his residential roots. Three of J.H. Snyder’s current
mixed-use projects are located in the L.A. area and each will
have a multifamily component that is long on luxury.
Oak Creek, J.H. Snyder’s $80 million, 40-acre mixed-use
development in Agoura, California, in suburban Los Angeles,
will open to tenants this month. The property will offer 336
luxury rental units as well as retail, five restaurant pads
and an extended-stay hotel on the 101 freeway frontage. The
24-building, two-level apartments will have a single-family
feel due to their spacing, underground parking, unexposed staircases,
wood trellises, balconies and overall craftsman influences.
Snyder originally planned a low-profile, high-tech office park
for the land before the office market bottomed out. Instead,
he built the townhome-quality apartments, which will provide
much needed housing for the area and lots of open space for
the tenants once they arrive. The units are spread across 19
acres, which are set around 11 additional acres of park land
that will offer Oak Creek residents many recreational options.
“When I bought the project, it involved two major hills
that couldn’t be touched and 100 oak trees that we had
to save, so there’s a lot of open space, a lot of jogging
area,” says Snyder.
J.H. Snyder makes an impression with its quality multifamily
work but also with its ability to sniff out prime real estate
opportunities. One need only look at The Crescent, the company’s
mixed-use project in Beverly Hills that will feature the first
new apartments there in 21 years. Adjacent to Spago restaurant
and within easy walking distance of Rodeo Drive, the location
of this complex is sure to turn heads.
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| The Crescent luxury apartments will be located in the
heart of Beverly Hills. |
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The $40 million complex, located at Wilshire and Crescent boulevards,
will feature a 40,000-square-foot boutique office building and
88 luxury apartments. The residential offerings, which include
one-, two- and three-bedroom units, have an elegant, modern
design with spacious patios and sweeping terraces. “They’re
very unique — they really are condominium quality as far
as having the granite and the marble,” says Snyder. “[Besides
the location,] we think the design is the kind of a thing that
stands out — wood, high ceilings, staff moldings, granite
all over the place, concierge, a beautiful parking area and
a nice galleria where you drive in.”
“We see this as a place for people who have sold their
home and maybe have another place in the desert and don’t
want the obligations of a home,” he adds.
If that wasn’t enough, J.H. Snyder recently broke ground
on a massive mixed-use redevelopment project in North Hollywood
called NoHo Commons. The project will consist of 438 apartments,
291 lofts on top of a parking deck and 70,000 square feet of
retail space. Not afraid of a challenge, Snyder’s company
begins construction of all components of the $130 million job
at the same time.
“It is a major statement for North Hollywood because you’re
talking about 729 apartments plus the retail so it really establishes
the neighborhood,” says Snyder. “Plus, you get on
the subway right there [at the NoHo Commons location] and you’re
downtown in no time.”
The Wilshire at Western
For owner Upside Investments, Projects West Construction was
the natural choice as the general contractor for the conversion
of the former Getty Oil Company office tower into The Wilshire
at Western luxury apartments. After all, the companies have
joined forces on multifamily development projects for more than
10 years now. Plus, Projects West Construction has experience
doing such adaptive reuse work.
“What we’re going to do is gut the building, reconvert
the lobby area and turn [the tower] into 260 luxury units, and
then add a top floor, which will have amenities such as a pool,
juice bar, sauna, grass park, gym, conference room, bathrooms
and showers,” says Scott Bain, chief operations officer
for Projects West Construction.
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| The former Getty Oil Company tower in Los Angeles
is being converted to The Wilshire at Western, a 260-unit luxury apartment
complex. |
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The Calabasas, California-based company has built, from the
ground up, many apartment units in the Los Angeles area but
Bain says The Wilshire at Western conversion from office to
multifamily in the downtown Wilshire area will be unique. Not
only will the development redefine apartment luxury and style
but it will likely serve as a model for a vast number of similar
properties in Los Angeles’ core.
“I feel that this is going to become somewhat mainstream
for a lot of the white-elephant-style buildings in downtown
L.A. that are not being used for office currently,” says
Bain. “As efforts are made to redevelop the inner city,
the only thing that is going to really convert it is to bring
people in on a full-time basis rather than just part-time from
the working standpoint. A lot of people want to live where they
work now, like in New York and Chicago. It’s desirable
now to be in the heart of the city.” In that sense, The
Wilshire at Western could be at the crest of a great wave of
people taking advantage of new opportunities to live downtown,
largely due to such office-to-apartment conversions.
When Bain talks about the luxury apartment setup at The Wilshire
at Western, he’s not shy — the words “new
industry benchmark” come up. Rooftop amenities, polished
concrete floors, elegant bathrooms, washers and dryers in every
unit, high-tech Internet and television capabilities, and a
fully secured lobby are just some of the features that will
set this multifamily property apart.
“We’re going to have security systems in place that
will allow the tenants to go by elevator only to their specific
floors,” says Bain. “So from a security standpoint,
it will be state-of-the-art.” Projects West will remove
four of the old elevators, rebuild the remaining four and install
a new elevator that will service the new 23rd-floor rooftop.
The bottom three floors will hold 30,000 square feet of high-end
retail space. The same reason that will attract scores of tenants
to The Wilshire at Western will undoubtedly bring quality retail
vendors — location, location, location. The property is
located across the street from the Wiltern Theatre and a Metrolink
station, half a block from a major supermarket chain, and one
block away from a major upscale gym.
“So it’s one of the few corners in Los Angeles where
you can literally leave your car in the garage, or not own a
car, and walk to restaurants, walk to shopping, walk to the
Metrolink safely,” says Sean Baker, president of Upside
Investments.
Baker’s company will offer the first four floors of The
Wilshire at Western for occupancy starting in April 2004. By
that time, the retail space, the lobby and all the rooftop amenities
will be completed.
“We obviously have to have the shell and core [of the
building] upgraded to the standards of the new seismic and engineering
requirements by the city,” says Bain. “In order
to open the door for resident Number 1, we have to have all
the amenities in the building available.” From there,
Projects West will build out the project both up and down until
all floors are ready for tenants. Through careful planning,
organization and things like a separate construction elevator
and separate parking, the residents will never know that construction
is going on in the building.
“It’s definitely under the spotlight,” says
Bain of the $21.5 million multifamily redevelopment, which is
projected to take 18 months to complete. “A lot of people
are watching it because there are a lot of buildings similar
to it, both in downtown L.A. and in the Wilshire District. We’re
definitely going to set a huge example here and we feel there
are a lot of other buildings that will potentially go this direction.”
©2003 France Publications, Inc. Duplication
or reproduction of this article not permitted without authorization
from France Publications, Inc. For information on reprints of
this article contact Barbara
Sherer at (630) 554-6054.
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