WeHo apartments on La Brea will cater to networked tenants

Two luxury apartment buildings under construction in West Hollywood are aimed at mobile, creative tenants who make a living on the go, often tapping on their laptops in coffee bars and other hangouts.

The goal of developers Essex Property Trust and the Monarch Group is to rethink apartments for people who don’t work 9 to 5 in a traditional office — a generally younger demographic found in abundance in West Hollywood.

Named the Huxley and the Dylan, they are being built on two busy intersections on La Brea Avenue at a cost of more than $150 million. They replace a fast-food eatery and a grocery store, adding to growing density on the city’s east end.

In an appeal to the socially networked, the apartment complexes are designed to encourage interaction among residents and support activity “programming” such as classes in bartending and flower arranging.

“It’s about providing a sense of community and the belief that if you do that correctly, the people it appeals to will find you,” said Mike Leipart of Beverly Hills real estate marketing firm the Agency. “Hotels have been doing this for years.

“You can walk into any Starbucks and you see a lot of people working. It’s still a relatively new trend in how we behave. This is going to be a reflection of that.”

Residents may multitask in courtyards, rooftop pool decks or clubhouses at the Huxley and the Dylan. The six-story complexes designed by Newman Garrison + Partners will house shops and restaurants at ground level when they are completed next spring.

The Huxley is rising at the southeast corner of Fountain Avenue and La Brea, where a Jons grocery store used to be. The Dylan site, at the northwest corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea, last held a Carl’s Jr. and is across the street from the West Hollywood Gateway shopping center, built in 2004.

The new apartments are named after writers Aldous Huxley and Dylan Thomas, Leipart said, though some people mistakenly think the Dylan is named for musician Bob Dylan and he is loath to correct them.

Dylan, he said, “is just a fun name.”

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