Downtown Women's Center plans supportive housing at 5th & San Pedro

The Downtown Women's Center wants to redevelop a surface parking lot next to its headquarters with permanent supportive housing, according to an entitlement application submitted earlier this year to the City of Los Angeles.

Aerial view of 501 E 5th Street northGensler/KFA Architecture

The proposed project, a joint venture with Daylight Community Development and GTM Holdings, would rise at the northeast corner of 5th and San Pedro Streets. Plans call for the construction of a seven-story, approximately 62,000-square-foot building containing 97 units of permanent supportive housing and one market-rate manager's unit.

The housing, according to findings included with the entitlement application, would be offer rents considered affordable to households at the low-, very low-, and extremely low-income levels. Other components of the development would include 10,000 square feet of space at the ground-floor for service providers, recreation areas for residents, and parking for 63 vehicles in a subterranean garage to serve the Downtown Women's Center.

Gensler and KFA Architecture are designing the project, which would have a contemporary exterior of cement plaster and perforated metal panels. Above the building's podium level, the structure would have a V-shaped footprint centered on an open-air courtyard and staircase facing San Pedro Street. A requested exemption from building setback requirements would seek to maintain the existing street walls along both San Pedro and 5th.

501 E 5th StreetGoogle Street View

Requested entitlements for the project include a general plan amendment and a zone change.

The apartment complex, which would rise on a city-owned parking lot, is the latest in a series of supportive housing developments on which the Downtown Women's Center and Daylight Community Development have partnered. The two firms have already received approvals for smaller projects in Van Nuys and North Hollywood.

The Downtown parking lot also sits one block east of the future site another supportive housing complex that is poised to break ground this year at 407 E. 5th Street, and one block north of a trio of high-rise towers planned by the Weingart Center.