Across the street from the Chinatown Metro station, construction is in the home stretch for new office complex from Redcar LTD is starting to take shape.

Rendered view looking southwest from Spring and CollegeLever Architecture

The project at 843 N. Spring Street, which comes from a project team that also includes LEVER Architecture, Shawmut Construction, and James Corner Field Operations, consists of a five-story building that will feature roughly 122,000 square feet of offices above 7,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and 141 underground parking stalls at completion.

The development, designed by LEVER Architecture, is one of the first ground-up projects in Los Angeles to lean heavily on cross-laminated timber as a building material. Roughly 82,000 square feet of three-ply and five-ply panels form the building's ceilings and floors, integrated into a skeleton of exposed steel columns.

The massing of 843 Spring leaves space for the timber panels to cantilever above balconies overlooking College Street, and blends floor plans into landscaped exterior spaces such as an atrium and a rooftop deck.

Construction at 843 N Spring StreetUrbanize LA

"The central vertical garden is envisioned as a 'fern canyon' with cascading green walls and reclaimed timber slabs set within a pebble floor," said James Corner Field Operations principal Sarah Weidner Astheimer in a January news release "The gardens at 843 N. Spring Street function as connective tissue between indoor work environments, repositioning the value of nature in our daily lives...."

Redcar, which is based in Santa Monica, launched in 2014 when it rehabilitated a neighboring building located at 759 N. Spring Street. Since then, the company has expanded its portfolio to include sites in Culver City, Santa Monica, and West Adams, it has continued to invest in new projects in the Downtown area - recently filing plans to develop an even larger office complex near L.A. State Historic Park.

The 843 Spring joins a handful of new and proposed developments near Chinatown Station, including High Street Residential's 318-unit Llewellyn complex which opened a block east in 2021 and upcoming projects from Atlas Capital Group and Townline and Forme Development.

843 N Spring StreetGoogle Maps