UPDATE: Information supplied by Curbed LA indicates that the above rendering no longer represents the current vision for the project.  Plans now call for 200 apartments and 4,700 square feet of retail space.

Sunset Boulevard, already in the midst of a pronounced building boom, is adding yet another large scale project to the pipeline.  According to a recent case filing with the Department of City Planning, the parking lot adjacent to the historic Earl Carroll Theatre will be replaced with a new mixed-use complex.  Developed by the Palo Alto-based Essex Property Trust, the seven-story Essex Hollywood would create 217 apartment units and a whopping 51,000 square feet of ground floor retail space.  With architectural work from San Francisco-based NC2, the project is designed to both incorporate and preserve the adjacent theater complex (for more on the history of the Earl Carroll Theatre, click here).  Essex's residential-retail complex would join a host of other developments currently planned or underway near the intersection of Sunset and Vine Street.  West LA-based Kilroy Realty recently broke ground on their $380 million redevelopment of the Columbia Square campus, with plans for a second project nearby on Vine Street.  Across the street from the Essex Hollywood, developer Crescent Heights has plans for a pair of high-rise towers on the parking lot of the Hollywood Palladium.  Despite concerns about fault lines and consistent NIMBY pushback, it appears that developers are still very eager to get in on Hollywood's revival.  With so much forward momentum, you have to wonder if the Gower Gulch strip mall is living on borrowed time.