Project Will Offer 88 Lofts for Sale
Downtown Los Angeles will get a rare type of new housing--lofts for sale--in a $25-million project by Hollywood-based CIM Group and Lee Group of Marina del Rey.
The companies acquired a former industrial building at 1140 S. Flower St., near Staples Center, and plan to convert the 111,000-square-foot property into 88 lofts that will sell from the high $200,000 range to $500,000.
The project will include 68 lofts in the existing three-story building and an additional 20 on a new fourth floor, said Jeff Lee, president of Lee Group, whose previous loft developments include the Venice Renaissance, an 89-unit retail and residential complex at Main and Rose streets in Venice known for the ballerina clown that juts from the building.
The developers bought the industrial property, known as the Bronson building, for about $5.8million from Flower Holdings, an affiliate of the owners of Staples Center, said CIM Group principal Avi Shemesh.
The building was erected in the mid-1930s and for many years was a United Parcel Service center and truck maintenance facility. Two garment firms now occupy the building, but their leases will expire before loft construction begins early next year, Lee said.
Work is expected to be finished in time for buyers to move in by late 2002 or early 2003.
The lofts will range from 990 to 2,285 square feet and are being designed by architects Van Tilburg, Banvard & Soderbergh of Santa Monica.
The project follows downtown developments that have converted office and industrial buildings to housing, but most of those have been apartments and lofts for rent.
“There has been little or no new housing for sale in downtown Los Angeles,” said Dan Rosenfeld, a principal at Los Angeles-based Urban Partners, a housing developer.
“Condominiums or lofts for sale are probably a better way [for a developer] to make more money quickly than apartments,” Rosenfeld said. “And homeownership is something that absolutely should be in the mix of downtown housing.”
“We see a strong demand for housing for sale downtown, but the only other for-sale project that we know of in the historic core is the toy lofts project at 3rd [Street] and Santa Fe [Avenue],” Lee said.
The Toy Warehouse Lofts is a 21-unit project being developed at a former toy warehouse by Torrance-based Decoma Industries. Construction is nearly complete on the project, according to Decoma President Steve Notar. He said 16 units in the old brick building are in escrow at prices from $240,000 to $520,000.
