CIM Group shows plans for former Farmers HQ campus in Mid-Wilshire

CIM Group has revealed renderings of its plans for a redevelopment of the historic Farmers Insurance campus in Mid-Wilshire into offices, homes, condominiums and apartments.

The Los Angeles developer is expected to present the plans to a Los Angeles design review board to add more than 80 condos and homes to the eastern half of the former Farmers complex at Wilshire Boulevard and Mullen Avenue, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.

Eight years after buying the 10-acre Miracle Mile campus headquarters for $91 million, the Mid-Wilshire based firm plans to convert the 85-year-old Moderne office landmark at 4680 Wilshire Blvd.

The adaptive reuse project, designed by Downtown-based Omgivning, will add 65 condominiums, with the back half of the six-story concrete building to remain offices. It will retain 234 parking spaces in an underground garage and surface lot.

Across Mullen to the east, CIM Group would build 16 single-family homes and duplexes on a block that fronts Muirfield Avenue and 8th Street, while removing 52 trees.
The homes, designed by Newport Beach-based Bassenian Lagoni Architects, would be two- and three-stories in Spanish and European Cottage styles, according to renderings presented this week.

Downtown-based AHBE | MIG, the project’s landscape architect, includes open gardens on the roof of the condominium complex and on the ground along the east and west sides of the building.

CIM Group, based in a former Farmers building nearby, is also moving forward with plans to redevelop the west side of the one-time campus of the insurer.

Earlier this month, CIM filed an application with the Department of City Planning for the adaptive reuse of a 144,000-square-foot building at 4750 Wilshire Blvd. If approved, most of the three-story building would be converted into 68 apartments, with offices to remain at street level. A three-level underground parking garage would also be retained.

CIM also intends to build 12 townhomes within the campus along 8th Street between Rimpau and Hudson Avenue.

The former Farmers headquarters was built in 1937 to house the Farmers Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange and Truck Insurance Exchange, now known as Farmers Insurance Group, based at Warner Center in Woodland Hills. In 1947, architects Claud Beelman and Herman Spackler added four floors to the Moderne building, with a classical ornament on top.

In 2017, CIM Group tried to sell the 185,000-square-foot landmark and an adjacent parking lot for $52 million, but the sale never closed, and the developer went back to the drawing board for redevelopment.

[Urbanize Los Angeles] – Dana Bartholomew

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