New details have emerged regarding a proposed $400-million apartment tower on the Miracle Mile via a staff report to the Los Angeles Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners.
The project, slated to replace a 1930s retail building at 5411 Wilshire Boulevard, is being developed by Walter N. Marks Inc. Plans filed with the City of Los Angeles call for the construction of a 42-story building containing 348 studio, one-, and two-bedroom apartments - including 51 affordable units - above a podium structure containing 548 parking stalls and 15,276 square feet of street-fronting commercial uses.
Keating Architecture's design for the tower has been described as having Art Deco elements, with the tower itself taking a curvilinear form. Architectural plans contained within the staff report indicate that the shimmering glass building would rise approximately 521 feet in height - culminating in a roof-level sky deck.
HED is serving as the project's architect of record.
The tower's podium would rise from a former Sontag Drug Store building at the corner of Wilshire and Cloverdale Avenue - which is to be retained and incorporate into the project's ground floor - with setbacks used to create additional landscaped amenity decks for residents.
Studio MLA is serving as the project's landscape architect.
Walter N. Marks, Inc. - which also owns the Helms Bakery District - anticipates that the tower will open in 2023, roughly the same time as Metro's Purple Line extension is expected to open.
Due to the number of existing parks within walking distance of the project site, the staff report recommends that the developer be required to make an in-lieu payment to the City rather than a land dedication for new public opens space.
The proposed tower joins a number of large scale multifamily residential projects planned or under construction in the Mid-Wilshire area, including a 21-story tower now rising next to the Museum Square complex and a mixed-use project slated to rise just north of Wilshire/La Brea Station.
The cultural institutions at the heart of the Miracle Mile are also seeing investment.
Construction is currently underway on the $388-million Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and the controversial rebuild of the LACMA campus is expected to break ground in early 2020.
Additionally, the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County have recently initiated a new master plan for the La Brea Tar Pits.
