A presentation to the Santa Monica Architectural Review Board reveals fresh renderings for a proposal which would replace a shopping center in the Ocean Park neighborhood with one of the city's largest apartment complexes.

View looking east from Lincoln BoulevardKoning Eizenberg Architecture

Last year, Balboa Retail Partners began working with Cypress Equity Investments on plans for a new mixed-use complex at 2601 Lincoln Boulevard. The project, which is currently named for its address, calls for razing existing parking and commercial buildings on a 4.7-acre site at the southeast corner of Lincoln Boulevard and Ocean Park Avenue. In their place, Balboa and CEI would build 12 new structures featuring a combined total of 521 studio, one-, and two-bedroom apartments, accompanied by approximately 30,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial uses and parking for 825 vehicles.

Plans call for 53 units of deed-restricted affordable housing, according to a plan set submitted to the Architectural Review Board.

Lincoln PlazaKoning Eizenberg Architecture

Koning Eizenberg is designing the project, which would feature new construction up to six stories in height, oriented on a network of courtyards interweaved with public and private landscaped areas. Plans call for buildings clad in a combination of grey metal paneling, composite wood siding, white sand finish cement plaster, and fiber cement board.

"The overall concept for the project is a layered transition between the commercial Lincoln Boulevard and the garden neighborhood to the east, with mixed-use 'boulevard' buildings along Lincoln Boulevard and fully residential 'garden' buildings to the east that are woven together with a network of outdoor courtyard spaces," reads a staff report.

View from Ocean Park BoulevardKoning Eizenberg Architecture

The presentation for the Architectural Review Board is for feedback, and a vote on the design concept is not scheduled at this point in time.

As of last year, a project website advertises a start date for construction in 2024.

Aerial view of project site at 2601 Lincoln BoulevardKoning Eizenberg Architecture

Cypress Equity Investments, one of the most prolific builders of apartments in Santa Monica in the past five years, has already constructed a series of smaller projects on Lincoln Boulevard in the city's downtown. The project at 2601 Lincoln would be its largest yet.

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