A Downtown L.A. parking lot slated for redevelopment since the 1980s will finally be replaced with a high-rise apartment building.

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Mitsui Fudosan America, Inc. - the American subsidiary of Japanese developer Mitsui Fudosan - has announced the groundbreaking of its Eighth & Figueroa project, named for the intersect at which it is located.  Plans call for a 42-story building which will contain 438 studio, one-, and two-bedroom apartments atop a podium structure containing a parking garage, an amenity deck, and approximately 7,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

Current work at the property is described as "site clearance operations," the first phase before initiating heavy construction.

“We are pleased to commence the next phase of this project and make our contribution to the renewed vitality and dynamism of Figueroa Street and the Financial District,” said Stuart Morkun, Vice President, Development and Co-Head of the Los Angeles Office for Mitsui Fudosan America in a news release. “The beginning of construction marks Mitsui Fudosan’s continued commitment to the revitalization of Downtown and the next phase of our investment that began more than 30 years ago.”

Johnson Fain is designing the approximately 530-foot-tall building, which will include a glass facade integrated with LED lights, culminated in an illuminated cornice.  Unlike other recent residential towers, the Eighth & Figueroa development will enclose its parking podium in the same glass material as the tower's trunk, the result of a condition of approval by the Los Angeles City Planning Commission.

The tower, located adjacent to the protected bike lanes built with the MyFigueroa streetscape improvement project, will also add a new mid-block crosswalk allowing for a pedestrian connection with the Figat7th shopping mall located across the street.

Lendlease Construction will serve as the project's general contractor, and estimates that construction will be completed in approximately three years.

Mitsui Fudosan has owned the Eighth & Figueroa site for nearly three decades, and previously considered developing the property with a hotel or an office building.  Plans for the residential tower date to 2016.

Eighth & Figueroa will be Mitsui Fudosan's second residential development in the Greater Los Angeles, and its fifth in California.  The company is also pursuing entitlements for a similar high-rise apartment building two blocks east at 8th and Hope Streets.

The project will fill in a large gap in the Downtown Financial District, and follows on the heels of several large developments that have reshaped the skyline.

A block west at 8th and Francisco Streets, Greenland USA announced the completion of its four-tower Metropolis complex earlier this year, and New York developer Brookfield has broken ground on a 64-story tower on a long-empty site adjacent to Figat7th.

One block north at 7th Street, Korean Air completed construction of the Wilshire Grand - a 73-story hotel and office tower that is by some measures the City's tallest building - in 2017.