Heavy equipment is on-site at 520 Mateo Street in the Arts District, as developer Carmel Partners breaks ground on a mixed-use high-rise development.
The centerpiece of the project, which abuts both the 4th Street Bridge and Santa Fe Avenue, will be a 35-story tower containing 475 live/work apartments - including 50 affordable units. Plans also call for the construction of a six-story structure containing 105,000 square feet of office space.
A shared podium structure spanning across the property would include parking for 650 vehicles, masked from view by roughly 20,000 square feet of ground-floor shops and restaurants.
Rising approximately 390 feet in height, the 520 Mateo development will be the tallest structure in the Arts District upon completion. Works Progress Architecture and Solomon Cordwell Buenz have designed the project as a contemporary glass-and-steel structure, with large amenity decks at the podium and roof levels. A former rail spur which flanks the southern property line is to be repurposed as a pedestrian passageway linking Mateo Street with Santa Fe Avenue.
An environmental study conducted for the project previously indicated that construction would occur over approximately 31 months, inclusive of the demolition of the warehouse that previously stood at 520 Mateo Street.
Though Carmel Partners may be the first developer to build a high-rise in the Arts District, they are not the only property owner seeking to construct a skyline in Downtown's easternmost neighborhood.
At 6th and Alameda Streets, Orange County developer SunCal has announced plans for a mixed-use complex which would feature two towers designed by Herzog & de Meuron.
A few blocks east at Mesquit Street, a cold storage facility is slated to make way for a Bjarke Ingels-designed high-rise development.
Carmel Partners, which is headquartered in San Francisco, is also developing more than 1,800 apartments in two Expo Line-adjacent projects on the Westside, and previously built the Atelier and Eighth & Grand projects in Downtown.
- 520 Mateo Street (Urbanize LA)
