A company tied to Cypress Equity Investments plans to develop a 128-unit affordable development in Pico-Union.
Cypress CEO Michael Sorochinsky controls the LLC that filed the project with the Department of City Planning on Thursday. The project would be 100% affordable, according to the filing. The Brentwood-based company did not immediately return a request for comment.
Cypress paid $5.7 million for the development site last year. A pair of buildings and a parking lot at 1216-1224 Menlo Avenue would be demolished to make way for the project. One of the properties is a commercial building with two occupants — a Japanese language school and a Christian college — and the other is an apartment building.
The developer plans to make use of the city’s Transit Oriented Communities program. The TOC program provides varying amounts of entitlements for projects near transit hubs, depending on the number of affordable units the developer sets aside. The site is also located in a federally designated Opportunity Zone, although it’s not clear whether the developer will take advantage of its eligibility.
Cypress has a number of other projects in the works around L.A., including a 66-unit devlopment in downtown Santa Monica and a 53-unit apartment building on Santa Monica’s border with the city of L.A.
Last year, Century West — an entity formed by Cypress Equity and Steven Fifield of Fifield Companies — sold the 398-unit Next on Sixth apartment building in Koreatown to Equity Residential for $189 million.