Nearly one decade after a preservation fight blocked plans to replace a grassy lawn in Koreatown with a high-rise, housing will instead come to the same property through the adaptive reuse ordinance. 

Jamison Services, owner of the Wilshire Park Place office complex at 3700 Wilshire Boulevard, is seeking permits to convert the existing 11-story high-rise into 370 live/work apartments. Some areas within the building that currently serve as parking are to be converted to tenant amenities.

Originally developed in the 1960s as Beneficial Plaza and Liberty Park, the SOM-designed mid-rise tower served as the headquarters of Beneficial Standard Life Insurance Company. However, the property is best known to locals for its expansive grass lawn fronting on Wilshire Boulevard. Although the site is privately owned, the lawn is often used for large gatherings - including recent World Cup festivities.

3700 Wilshire BoulevardGoogle Maps

Jamison Services, which has owned the property for nearly 30 years, initiated plans in 2016 to redevelop the front lawn with a 36-story, 506-unit residential tower. That project prompted a push to nominate the property for local landmark status, resulting in the high-rise proposal being put on ice.

That setback has not stopped Jamison from building high-rise towers elsewhere in the neighborhood, such as the Opus development a few blocks to the east. Jamison has converted a number of larger office buildings in the neighborhood to housing, as part of its aggressive pipeline of adaptive reuse projects.

Koreatown, notoriously park poor, will soon get some true public green space in the form of a new pocket park taking shape on the parking lot of the neighboring Pio Pico library branch. The City of Los Angeles has also recently acquired an empty long on Kingsley Drive further to the north with plans for additional green space.

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