Ohio developer plans mixed-use project at West Hollywood car wash site

Stark Enterprises — no, not the Stark from “Iron Man” — recently plopped down $21.25 million, or about $652 per square foot, for a West Hollywood car wash in one of the highest price-per-square-foot land deals in the submarket’s recent history.

The Cleveland, Ohio, based firm plans to build a mixed-use development on the quarter-acre site at 431 North La Cienega Boulevard, which is occupied by Mikey’s Car Wash. It has tapped Beverly Hills-based Robin Group as its local development partner, The Real Deal has learned.

The sale is the third priciest-per-square-foot deal in West Hollywood since 2000, CoStar shows. The record is held by the property at 8920 West Sunset Boulevard, which traded for $970 per square foot in July 2015 to New York developer VE Equities.

Stark has yet to file official plans for the site, which is under split jurisdiction between West Hollywood and the City of Los Angeles. The developer will, however, go “all-in” on a project with ground-floor retail space and apartments above, said broker Brandon Michaels of Marcus & Millichap, who represented both the buyer and the seller in the November sale with colleague Lonnie McDermott.

“It’s going to be a substantial project, with a lot of capital,” Michaels said.

Stark, which could not be reached for comment, has a number of commercial, retail, and residential projects in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Southern California, according to its website.

The developer is prepared to comply with Measure JJJ, which requires all projects of a certain size include a percentage of affordable units, hire local workers, and pay union-level wages for their labor.