Affordable housing coming to 7th & New Hampshire

A filing with the Los Angeles Department of City Planning offers new details on a proposal to incorporate a 110-year-old mansion in Koreatown into a new permanent supportive housing development.

View looking southwest from 7th Street and New Hampshire AvenueKTGY

BRIDGE Housing Corp., the San Francisco-based non-profit developer behind the project at 7th Street and New Hampshire Avenue, is working Children's Institute International, Inc., to redevelop the organization's Mid-Wilshire Campus. Plans call for the adaptive reuse of the existing Renaissance Revival home, completed in 1911, while demolishing an adjoining infant care and child study center to make way for the construction of a new six-story apartment building. The completed project would include 95 residential units - half of which would be reserved as permanent supportive housing - with 12 parking stalls.

Project entitlements include Transit Oriented Communities incentives, permitting increased density and reduced setback requirements. The project is eligible for the incentives, as all of the proposed units are to be priced for low- and extremely low-income households, and the site sits a short distance from the Wilshire/Vermont subway station.

City records indicate that KTGY is designing the project. The design of the new building is described as having "modular" elements, with its lower two stories pushed out to match the frontage of the adjoining mansion. A slim courtyard would divide the old and new construction.

701-719 S New Hampshire AvenueGoogle Maps

The current plan for 7th and New Hampshire has been pared back from a concept considered by city officials last year, which had called for a larger $83-million building containing 144 units of affordable and permanent supportive housing. At the time, construction was expected to start by June 2021 and conclude in December 2022.

Other Southern California projects from BRIDGE Housing Corp. include the Jordan Downs redevelopment in Watts, and smaller housing complexes planned or under construction Long Beach and Pasadena.

BRIDGE's Koreatown development would rise across the street from a towering 38-story market-rate housing development now being built by Holland Partner Group, and within walking distance of a handful of smaller under-construction housing projects.