By 2023, the long-awaited extension of the Purple Line will bring Metro Rail service 3.9 miles west to the Miracle Mile and Beverly Hills.  And by that time, a $400-million mixed-use development could be open just west of the under-construction Wilshire/La Brea Station.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Walter N. Marks, Inc., the longtime owner of the Staples Building at 5411 Wilshire Boulevard, intends to raze the mid-1930s building to construct a residential tower in its place.  Plans call for a 42-story high-rise, featuring 371 apartments - including 56 affordable housing units - atop a podium lined with street-fronting retail and restaurant space.

The project is being designed by Keating Architecture, best known for the Gas Company Tower in Downtown Los Angeles. The proposed tower is described as featuring a "curvilinear shape," soaring above an Art Deco building at Wilshire and Cloverdale Avenue that will remain in place.

Plans call for multiple outdoor amenity areas, including a podium-level deck featuring swimming pools and a rooftop garden.  Additionally, the building would feature a gym, a yoga studio, a golf simulator, and a two-lane bowling alley.

The Times reports that the Marks family anticipates completion of the 5411 Wilshire development in 2023, on the heels of the completion of Wilshire/La Brea Station.

The Keating-designed tower follows two other recent high-rise developments in the Mid-Wilshire area, including an 18-story apartment tower built by UDR, Inc. at Wilshire and Crescent Heights Boulevard, and a 20-story building from J.H. Snyder Co. now under construction at Wilshire and Curson Avenue.

The new towers will bookend the LACMA campus, where the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have approved a controversial $650-million project that would replace two of the museum's original buildings with a new structure designed by Peter Zumthor.  Construction is also underway for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences' long-awaited museum at Wilshire and Fairfax Avenue, which is highlighted by an orb-like structure designed by Renzo Piano.