Jamison picks LA courthouse for next office-home conversion

Jamison Services, a prolific developer of office-to-home conversions, wants to turn a soaring mirrored-glass courthouse in Westlake into hundreds of live-work apartments.

The Koreatown-based landlord and developer led by Jaime Lee has filed plans to convert the 19-story Los Angeles Superior Court Tower into 428 homes at 600 South Commonwealth Avenue, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.

Jamison bought the 348,000-square-foot building overlooking Lafayette Park in 2014 for $50 million, or $144 per square foot. Tenants include the Central Civil West courthouse of Los Angeles Superior Court and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Plans call for converting its offices into 428 live/work apartments, with part of its parking garage for 200 cars turned into storage space and tenant amenities.

The conversion from offices to homes could cost $50 million, according to plans now under review by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety.

The L.A. Superior Court Tower, built in 1972, was designed by Langdon and Wilson to serve as the Los Angeles offices of Chicago-based CNA Financial.

The rectangular tower sits diagonally on the corner of Commonwealth and Sixth Street across from the historic First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.

It has mirrored vacuum-sealed glass intended to softly reflect its surroundings, according to the Los Angeles Times. And it is supported by sculptured granite buttresses that flow into a granite and concrete plaza, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.

“Its mirrored glass skin (reflects) the ever-changing light and color of the sky, from blue to dusky orange to purple,” the preservation group said in a description. “(Its) landscape blends into the larger park below with trees, grass and planters.

“As a result, the enormous skyscraper does not loom over the greenery of the park, but seems to sprout up from the earth itself like a geometric glass flower.”

The tower is the latest change around Lafayette Park, which in the past decade has seen commercial buildings to the south along Wilshire Boulevard replaced by the 25-story Kurve apartment tower and the Next on Sixth complex, which features a Target on the ground floor, according to Urbanize.

Jamison Services, a unit of Jamison Properties and the largest office landlord in Koreatown, has led the city in office-to-home conversions.

The developer is now converting the 19-story office tower at 695 South Vermont Avenue into apartments, and has filed plans to convert a six-story office building at 520 South La Fayette Park Place in Westlake into 141 homes.

Last February, Jamison filed plans to build a seven-story, 30-unit apartment building at 544 South Mariposa Avenue in Koreatown. In August 2022, the company filed plans to convert the Pierce National Life Building, an office fixture in Koreatown for a half century, into a 13-story apartment building at 3807-3815 Wilshire Boulevard.

In June, Jamison also filed plans to convert the 33-story ARCO tower at 1055 West 7th Street in Downtown into 691 apartments. At the same time, the firm filed plans to convert a 17-story, 144,000-square-foot office tower at 6380 Wilshire Boulevard in Carthay into 210 apartments.

— Dana Bartholomew

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