After a more than two-year wait, a multifamily residential development across the street from Lincoln Heights has secured approval after the applicant used state law to force the City of Los Angeles' hand.

Back in 2023, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission approved an application from Lincoln Park Holdings, LLC (an affiliate of Brenner Capital) to redevelop a parking lot at 3601 Mission Road with a new seven-story building featuring 184 studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments above parking for 101 vehicles. Lahmon Architects designed the contemporary podium-type building, named Mission and Lincoln for its cross streets of Mission Road and Lincoln Park Avenue.

View from Mission Road looking northLahmon Architects

Among the entitlements authorized by the Planning Commission were off-menu density bonus incentives, allowing for a larger structure with less on-site parking than typically required by zoning rules. In exchange for the incentives, the developer would set aside 47 of the new apartments are to be set aside for rent as affordable housing at the very low-income level.

After receiving Planning Commission approval, the project ran into a new obstacle: the procedures of the Los Angeles City Council. Two appeals were filed following the Commission hearing - one by the Supporters Alliance for Environmental Responsibility (an affiliate of LIUNA), and a second by the Lincoln Heights Preservation Coalition - which argued that the project should be subject to additional environmental review. 

According to a letter submitted to the city by the Brenner Capital's legal representation, the applicant agreed to extend the initial 75-day period to act on the appeals from their original expiration date of September 12, 2023 to October 25, 2023 at the request of then Councilmember Kevin de Leon. The appeals were scheduled to be heard by the Council's Planning and Land Use Management Committee on October 3, 2023, only for the hearing to unexpectedly be continued to October 17, 2023, at which time the item was continued to a date uncertain. As a result, the Council lost jurisdiction to act on the appeals of the project entitlements, which were rendered moot. These events overlapped with a period in time where De Leon was largely absent from public view following the release of the infamous "fed tape," in which he and other members of the Council were heard to make racist and disparaging remarks about colleagues and constituents during a discussion regarding the redistricting process.

View looking southeastLahmon Architects

However, the city's municipal code does not place a time limit to act on appeals of the project's environmental review, which have remained in limbo for over two years. The attorney's letter states that Council District 14 failed to respond to multiple requests from the applicant regarding what objections exists to the project's environmental impact between 2023 and 2024. When the item was finally scheduled for a hearing on August 6, 2024, De Leon's office requested that a voluntary Phase II environmental report be conducted to address concerns raised by neighbors regarding potential soil contamination. The study was completed in advance for the next hearing date, scheduled for September 17, 2024, only for the hearing to be continued again to December 3, 2024 - a meeting where the Committee lost quorum and a vote was not held. The attorney's letter notes that De Leon was in the midst of an ultimately unsuccessful re-election campaign over much of this period, and alleged that he had blocked the project from moving forward to avoid taking a stance on any issue he deemed controversial.

With De Leon gone, the issue finally came to a head in May 2025, when Brenner Capital filed a notice of abuse discretion with the State of California, giving the City of Los Angeles 90 days to approve the project, or face financial and legal penalties. The August 19 Council meeting, which represented the deadline for approval of the project, saw the Council reject both appeals.

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