The shell of a 1990s commercial building near Metro's Chinatown Station will soon become the ground floor of a new office complex built with mass timber.
View of outdoor gardenLever Architecture
Santa Monica-based developer Redcar Properties recently broke ground on a project which will stack four new levels atop a single-story structure at 843 N. Spring Street. The resulting building will include more than 120,000 square feet of offices for rent above approximately 7,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and subterranean parking for 141 vehicles.
Lever Architecture is designing the office building, which will be composed of a steel frame and cross-laminated timber floors. Due to the elevation change across the site, the development will present a five-story face to Spring Street, but scale down to four stories along New High Street to the west.
The project, according to Lever Architecture founder and principal Thomas Robinson, is one of the first Los Angeles-area buildings of its scale to use cross-laminated timber as a feature of both the design and the tenant experience.
Building interiorLever Architecture
Working with landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations, the structure will incorporate a series of outdoor terraces and decks, as well as open-air circulation elements. “The project really takes advantage of the type of climate you have in Los Angeles,” says Robinson.
Construction of 843 Spring, which is being built by Shawmut Design and Construction, is on pace for completion in mid-summer 2022.
The new office building is the latest and largest in a series of developments from Redcar in the Chinatown neighborhood, following the restoration of existing commercial buildings at 759 and 837 N. Spring Street. The company's other projects include proposed and under-construction office buildings in Santa Monica, West Adams, and Culver City.
View from College Street looking northwestUrbanize LA
Redcar's 843 Spring Street project also follows on the heels of a handful of new commercial developments near Metro's Chinatown Station, including the 200-unit Blossom Plaza apartments across the street and the Trammell Crow Company subsidiary High Street Residential's 318-unit Llewellyn complex a block east. Other projects in the pipeline include College Station, a 725-unit housing complex planned by Atlas Capital Group, and the 25-story Harmony apartment tower at 942 N. Broadway.
The 843 Spring office building is one of just a handful of developments employing mass timber construction in Los Angeles. Non-profit developer Skid Row Housing Trust also plans to make use of the construction type for a proposed 14-story high-rise in Downtown, although that project has yet to break ground.
- Chinatown (Urbanize LA)
843 N Spring StreetGoogle Maps
