CIM clears hurdle toward building 109-unit complex in Hollywood

A local developer has won preliminary approval to build a 109-unit apartment complex in Hollywood across from a controversial project once known as Sunset Gordon.

CIM Group, based in Mid-Wilshire, received a go-ahead from the Los Angeles Planning Commission to build a mixed-use, seven-story building at 6007 Sunset Boulevard, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.

The project at Sunset and Gordon Street would require demolishing a mix of one- and two-story commercial buildings that now house a liquor store and a hair salon.

CIM has increased the size of its initial proposal five years ago to build 63 apartments at the site by 73 percent.

In 2017, CIM evicted the residents of 15 units at the development site through the Ellis Act. State law generally requires that affordable units demolished or vacated for a new development be replaced. But firms only have to replace 70 percent of those units if the existing units were market rate.

Its new plans call for a 101,000-square-foot building containing 109 studio, one-, and two-bedroom apartments built atop 14,700 square feet of shops and restaurants. A four-story parking garage, including one underground lot, would serve nearly 200 cars.

The developer was given a density bonus allowing a larger building with less open space in exchange for setting aside 14 affordable apartments for households of very low-income.

ShubinDonaldson, an architectural firm based in Culver City, has designed the building to include four levels of wood-frame construction above a three-level concrete base. The charcoal-colored complex, to be sheathed in stucco and corrugated metal panels, would contain parking, courtyards and rooftop patio decks.

Many of CIM’s recent projects are located in Silver Lake and West Adams, a working-class neighborhood which it has been accused of gentrifying with hardball tactics. 

But it’s also familiar with Hollywood, sometimes with infamous results.

Directly across the street from the proposed project, CIM built a 22-story, 299-unit apartment tower at Sunset and Gordon in 2015, only to see California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal invalidate its approvals. The building would sit vacant for three years.

Dozens of tenants at the Sunset Gordon tower were forced to relocate after the court ruled that CIM Group had not adhered to a condition that a 1920s building that previously housed an Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant be preserved. CIM instead built a replica of the building at the ground floor of the new development. The tower has since been re-approved and built.

The renamed complex, now called Lumina Hollywood, was acquired by a Canadian real estate investment trust in February, which paid $79.4 million to assume ownership of the property.

[Urbanize Los Angeles] – Dana Bartholomew

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