Developer upgrades plans for Arts District office tower to 18 stories

A local developer has revised plans for a creative office tower in the Arts District in Downtown Los Angeles.

Legendary Group, based in Pasadena, has filed plans to build an 18-story, 328,000-square-foot, mixed-use tower at 411 South Hewitt St., which would incorporate the former A+D Museum, Urbanize Los Angeles reported. The museum closed in June 2020.

The Above project, as it’s known, revises plans submitted five years ago that called for an 11-story building at 4th and Hewitt streets.

The new Legendary building, designed by Downtown L.A.-based Gensler, would rise above the 7,800-square-foot shuttered museum.

Plans including the seven additional stories call for a total of 311,682 square feet of offices on the upper floors of the building, with 8,149 square feet of restaurant space at the ground floor, flanked by a new landscaped courtyard fronting Colyton Street.

The creative office tower would be stacked above a large parking podium. A garage would span three underground and five above-grade levels.

Renderings of the project depict its lower parking section with an industrial look, while the upper floors would be sheathed in glass. Terrace decks with tenant patios are planned on the top floor, and above the podium.

Construction is set to begin in the middle of next year and be completed by 2026.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Mike Condon Jr., Brittany Winn, McKenna Gaskill, Pete Collins and Scott Menkus will lead leasing efforts.

The project calls for multiple, high-clearance spaces on the ground floor and throughout the building, which is geared toward a rise in entertainment production and creative tenants in need of space with volume, Winn said in a statement.

“Of the 4 million square feet of new inquiries we have seen over the last 12 months in the Arts District,” she said, “over 25 percent of these requirements have included a need for high-clear space, and Above has been designed to meet the demands of the market.”

Legendary Group, also doing business as Legendary Development, together with Brookfield Residential developed The Aliso, a $215-million, 472-unit mixed-use project in the Arts District.

The Arts District has been transformed from a derelict warehouse district a decade ago to a magnet for creative office development ,with projects ranging from members-only social club Soho House to a 113,000-square-foot office by Related Companies.

The submarket is also a federally designated opportunity zone, which allows investors to defer capital gains taxes should they invest in real estate.

Last May, Atlas Capital Group announced a $650 million soundstage development near the Arts District, and SteelWave acquired a newly constructed office and retail campus from CEG Construction for $80 million. Last summer, Rexford Industrial Realty acquired a four-building creative industrial business park for $94 million.

Continuum Partners also plans to build a $2 billion project in the Arts District with more than 400,000 square feet of office space, a hotel and 1,500 multifamily units. The firm is also working on a 13-story mixed-use development on Mateo Street.

“The Arts District has recently seen an emergence of tenants looking for unique creative office space as demand looks to outweigh supply. We received nearly 800,000 square feet in tenant inquiries in Q1 2022,” Gaskill, of Cushman & Wakefield, said. “Tenants’ desire to grow their business here is stronger than ever, exemplified by several recent headquarters relocations into the area by prominent companies in a variety of industries.”

[Urbanize Los Angeles] – Dana Bartholomew