Glassell Park redevelopment to turn former church site into 37 homes

In Glassell Park, a neighborhood in Northeast Los Angeles bordering Eagle Rock and Mount Washington, a division of 37 homes will be built on the former grounds of a Mormon church that was destroyed by a brush fire in 2015.

IHP Capital Partners, the project’s equity investor in Newport Beach, and Comstock Homes, a builder headquartered in El Segundo, recently formed a joint venture to develop the 1.9-acre site at 3845 Fletcher Drive. The currently unnamed project will feature detached, single family homes with floor plans ranging from 1,650 square feet to 1,740 square feet. The homes will include two-to-three bedrooms and two-and-half bathrooms.

Construction is planned to start in the first quarter of 2023. Home sales are anticipated to begin in the second quarter of 2023, said Jeff Enes, IHP’s senior vice president. A 37-home development is a sizable number for an infill project, he added.

“L.A. doesn’t have a lot of development opportunities. It is all really redevelopment,” Enes said. “One of the advantages of infill development is there’s less competition for new homes. That dynamic is attractive to our investors, especially in a housing cycle that is slowing due to rising mortgage rates.”

Enes said pricing the homes would be determined before construction ends. He did not disclose how much the project would cost to build.

The site was previously a chapel for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The July 2015 fire started along the 2 Freeway but quickly spread to the church and collapsed the roof.

IHP has served as equity investor for a handful of other infill developments in the Los Angeles area, including the Williams Valley Village project of 26 townhomes and single-family homes in the Valley Village area of the San Fernando Valley. There’s also Williams Ranch, a 497-home master planned community in the Santa Clarita Valley, and Mirren, a 33-home development in Arcadia.

Glassell Park’s Fletcher Drive neighborhood is a hot area for infill development. Less than one mile away from the IHP and Comstock site, there are two projects in development. One is Inizio, a project of 17 small lot homes developed by Newport Beach-based Planet Home Living. Floor plans will range from 1,733 square feet to 2,275 square feet. Sales will be handled by Tracy Do Group, which is affiliated with Coldwell Banker Realty.

Across the street is 3400 N. Fletcher Dr., a development of 18 homes owned and developed by a limited liability company called 3400 Fletcher LLC, according to media reports. Attempts to contact the developer and contractors were unsuccessful.

Mark Mullin, a realtor with Tracy Do Group, said that Northeast Los Angeles has been attractive to developers for the past few years.

“It’s not easy to find land,” he said. “It’s more cost-effective for developers to work on this side of Los Angeles than West L.A., where there are higher acquisition costs versus what they can sell the product in the end.”

Glassell Park’s home prices have been increasing. In May 2022, a median home price for Glassell Park was $1.16 million. Home prices have increased 13 percent compared to the same time in 2021, according to Redfin listing site. Around 2020, median home prices in Glassell Park were $800,000.

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