Mixed-use project survives two appeals in Studio City

In a unanimous vote, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission rejected a pair of appeals seeking to block the construction of a mixed-use apartment complex across the street from what was until recently known as the CBS Studio Center lot in Studio City.

The proposed project, which would rise from a roughly 16,000-square-foot site at the southwest corner of Radford Avenue and Hoffman Street, calls for razing a vacant auto repair garage to make way for a new six-story edifice featuring 54 studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments above 3,374 square feet of ground-floor commercial space. Parking for 77 vehicles would be located at-grade and in subterranean and podium levels.

Project applicant Rafi Kuyumjian entitled the site using Transit Oriented Communities incentives to permit greater height and less on-site open space than allowed by zoning. In exchange, six of the proposed apartments would be set aside as affordable housing at the extremely low-income level.

Architect Sam Aslanian is designing the apartment complex, named Radford Place, which would include central courtyard, two amenity decks, and a recreation room. Renderings depict a contemporary low-rise building.

The project faced overlapping appeals brought by a group of neighboring residents and property owners, who argued that the new apartment complex would create a nuisance for the surrounding community, and contended that the site should not have been eligible for Transit Oriented Communities incentives. A staff report, finding no evidence for the claims raised by the appellants, recommended that entitlements granted earlier this year should be upheld.

Nuisance or not, other changes may be on the horizon for the neighborhood. Late last year, Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital acquired the 55-acre CBS Studio Center property for a reported sum of $1.85 billion.

• Mixed-use apartment building planned near CBS Studio Center (Urbanize LA)