Beaux-Arts Garland Building to become office space, not apartments

The owner of the century-old Garland Building in Downtown Los Angeles has ditched plans for a residential conversion of the 11-story structure, which used to house the Globe Theater.

Instead, city records show the building at 740 South Broadway will be turned into office space, Urbanize reported.

Permits were submitted last month for a “full building restoration,” including office uses on the second through 11th floors, along with a conversion of basement office space into a bar and reactivation of ground-floor retail. Construction has started, with the owners tapping Downtown-based adaptive reuse specialists Omgivning as architect on the project, according to the report.

The owner, listed as 740 South Broadway Associates LLC, submitted plans to convert the building into 47 live-work units in mid-2016. Most of the building has been unoccupied since the 1980s.

The same owner had already spent $5 million to rehab and reopen the ground-floor Globe in 2015 into a nightclub and party venue.

Downtown has seen high points in vacancy for both office and residential space amid a storm of development over the last few years, but residential vacancies are down compared to a year ago.

The Beaux-Arts Garland building was originally called the Morosco Theatre named for its developer, theater producer Oliver Morosco, according to the L.A. Conservancy. It became the Globe Theater in the 1940s. [Urbanize] — Dennis Lynch