A local non-profit organization's plans for new supportive housing in Downtown Los Angeles will soon face an appeal from a neighboring business owner.
In May 2019 the Coalition for Responsible Community Development filed plans with the City of Los Angeles to convert three buildings at 803-821 E. 5th Street into 95 apartments - including one manager's unit and 94 extremely low-income affordable units. The adaptive reuse project would offer apartments averaging 275 in size with approximately 9,200 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and 10 parking stalls.
Plans show that Koreatown-based QDG Architecture is designing the proposed development, which would retain the three- and seven-story height profiles of the existing buildings.
The appellant, listed as Julia Joseph representing Alaska Seafood Co., is seeking to overturn a Zoning Administrator's determination issued in May which exempted the project from the California Environmental Quality Act and permitted apartments as small as 240 square feet in size - well below the 450-square-foot minimum typically required of projects approved through the adaptive reuse ordinance.
The appellant's primary objections to the project center on parking in the surrounding neighborhood. In a note submitted with the appeal, Joseph claims that the property previously included a total of 32 vehicle spaces, and opposes any reduction from that total.
The three buildings slated for conversion include a three-story structure at 5th Street and Stanford Avenue which was completed in 1911 as a hotel catering to passengers coming to and from the former Southern Pacific Railroad Terminal at Central Avenue. The two other structures, which date to the 1970s, were previously a rehabilitation facility for the Salvation Army.
Other real estate projects from the Coalition for Responsible Community Development are centered in South Los Angeles, including three ground-up apartment buildings along a two-block stretch of Main Street.
- Affordable Housing Planned for Vacant Skid Row Buildings (Urbanize LA)
Interested in finding affordable housing? Visit housing.lacity.org.