Toyota of Hollywood could turn into a retail village

LAcarGuy and Hines plan to build apartments, offices and shops on site of car lot

Mike Sullivan and rendering for 6000 W. Hollywood Blvd (The Sullivan Family, Getty Images)
Mike Sullivan and rendering for 6000 W. Hollywood Blvd (The Sullivan Family, Getty Images)

The nation’s oldest Toyota dealership may clear its Hollywood lot for hundreds of apartments, offices, townhomes, shops and restaurants.

An affiliate of Houston-based Hines has filed plans to replace the 65-year-old Toyota of Hollywood with a retail village at 6000 West Hollywood Boulevard, Bisnow reported.

Plans call to replace the car lot with a 35-story apartment tower and three-story townhomes flanked by a six-story office building on Hollywood Boulevard between Bronson Street and Gower Avenue.

The 501,460-square-foot retail village would include shops and restaurants on two levels connected to outdoor dining areas and public plazas. Of the development’s 350 apartments, 44 would be set aside as affordable.

Toyota of Hollywood, founded in 1957, is a subsidiary of Hawthorne-based LAcarGuy, which has 13 Los Angeles County dealers, owned by the Sullivan family.

“We have envisioned a truly mixed-use campus where people will be able to live, work and play right on Hollywood Boulevard,” Mike Sullivan, owner and CEO of the firm, said in a statement. “We believe this development will extend the great energy of Hollywood Boulevard farther east and offer a new gathering place for Hollywood residents and visitors.”

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The mixed-use village, designed by Culver City-based Office untitled, would be clad in mostly floor-to-ceiling glass for its apartments and offices, interspersed with gabled townhomes, according to a rendering.

The project applicant is 6000 Hollywood Boulevard Associates LLC, which lists the Downtown Los Angeles offices of Hines as its business address, according to Bisnow.

Toyota of Hollywood, located at the site of the original headquarters of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., opened in October 1957 on the site of a former Ford dealer managed by Mike Sullivan’s father, Wilfred Sullivan, according to the Beverly Press.

Its first cars were two Toyota Toyopet sedans shipped over from Japan to test whether consumers would be interested in the vehicles. By 1958, what is now the world’s biggest automaker had set up 45 dealerships, selling 288 Toyotas in the U.S.

In 2016, Toyota relocated its North American headquarters from Torrance to Texas, taking thousands of jobs from Southern California.

— Dana Bartholomew

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