New look, updated plans for two Expo/Bundy-adjacent apartment buildings

Last week, Carmel Partners filed plans with the City of Los Angeles to redevelop six single-family dwellings next to Metro's Expo/Bundy Station with a mixed-use apartment complex. Now, the San Francisco-based developer sends word that it is changing up its plans for two other projects next door.

In late 2021, Carmel filed an application with the Planning Department to redevelop 16 houses on the blocks located at 2217 and 2301 S. Bundy Drive with a pair of eight-story buildings containing a combined sum of nearly 455 apartments. At the time, the developer was working with Carrier Johnson + Culture on the design of the project.

Carmel is now working with TCA Architects, the same firm leading the design of its neighboring project at 2201 Bundy, on the design for the buildings. The revised project is similar in scale and form, with no ground-floor retail, but habitable spaces and live/work units lining street frontages along Bundy Drive to the east, Amherst Avenue to the west, and Tennessee Avenue between the two sites.

A site plan also indicates adjustments to the amount of housing and parking proposed for each site. The smaller building at 2301 Bundy retains the same 195 apartments proposed in the original plan, but reduces the amount of on-site parking from 190 stalls to 177 spaces. At the time the project was submitted for entitlements, the use of Transit Oriented Communities incentives called for 22  of the proposed one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments to be set aside for rent as affordable housing at the extremely low-income level.

Changes are more visible on the northern site at 2217 Bundy, where Carmel has acquired a final single-family home that had not been included in the original filing. With the slightly larger footprint, plans now call for 290 apartments and parking for 283 vehicles in lieu of the 265 apartments and originally planned. As with the neighboring site, the 2217 Bundy Parcel relies on Transit Oriented Communities incentives to achieve greater density and height than allowed by zoning, requiring an 11 percent set aside of on-site affordable housing at the extremely low-income level.

Carmel hopes to break ground on the new apartments in the first half of 2023, according to an executive with the company.

Combined with the recently-filed project at 2201 Bundy, Carmel is now in the entitlement phase for more than 600 apartments in the immediate vicinity of Expo/Bundy Station. The San Francisco-based firm is one of the first entities to take advantage of new zoning rules enacted under  the Exposition Corridor Transit Neighborhood Plan, which permits the neighborhood of single-family homes to the south of the station to be redeveloped with apartments.

Other projects in the works near the station include the West Edge, a larger mixed-use project now under construction at the former site of Martin Cadillac that will include 600 apartments, a Gelson's supermarket, and a 200,000-square-foot office building leased by Riot Games.

Carmel is one of the developers responsible for transforming neighborhoods around several E Line stops. In 2020, the company completed work on Linea, a 595-unit apartment complex with retail next to Expo/Sepulveda Station. The developer is also in the midst of construction on the Cumulus District, a sprawling complex next to La Cienega/Jefferson Station that will ultimately feature more than 1,200 apartments.

• Carmel Partners plans 136 apartments at 2201 S. Bundy Drive (Urbanize LA)

• Carmel Partners plans 455 apartments near Expo/Bundy Station (Urbanize LA)