Onni Group to build Art Deco tower in Mid-Wilshire

Design of 45-story apartment complex incorporates former Post Office on ground floor

Inno De Cotiis and rendering of 5350-5376 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles (MVE + Partners, Onni Group)
Inno De Cotiis and rendering of 5350-5376 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles (MVE + Partners, Onni Group)

Onni Group is going large in Mid-Wilshire with an Art Deco-inspired apartment tower.

The Vancouver-based firm has unveiled plans for a 45-story, mixed-use housing tower at 5350-5376 Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Urbanize Los Angeles reported. The project will preserve century-old Art Deco storefronts.

The company paid $30 million last May for the 1.4-acre site between Detroit Street and Cloverdale Avenue.

Plans call for a 45-story building with 419 one- and two-bedroom apartments above 2,700 square feet of ground-floor restaurants. A parking garage above and below ground will serve 443 cars.

Requested entitlements include Transit Oriented Communities incentives for higher density in exchange for 47 affordable apartments set aside for extremely low income households.

The proposed project is down the street from a future Wilshire/La Brea subway station.

The 530-foot-tall project, designed by Downtown-based MVE + Partners, reimagines Art Deco design from the past century with symmetry, geometric lines and repeat patterns. The glass building will feature layers of protruding balconies beneath a crown containing five penthouses.

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The 708 Cloverdale project, as it is known, will include a gym, sky lounge and pool deck.
Onni intends to preserve 42,000 square feet of commercial buildings along Wilshire Boulevard, including an Art Deco building that houses a U.S. Post Office that inspired the new design.

“Architect Edward Sibbert’s use of strong vertical lines and Art Deco details has heavily influenced the framing at the tower,” according to the project description. “As the gateway to Miracle Mile east, the new tower will serve as an elegant beacon that will highlight an entry to the collection of cultural arts buildings, museums and public art spaces within Miracle Mile.”

It will join Onni’s plan to revamp the Wilshire Courtyard complex with 2.3 million square feet of offices at 5700 and 5750 Wilshire Boulevard, for which it paid $630 million before the pandemic, according to The Real Deal.

It will also add to a 42-story residential tower in the works at 5411 Wilshire Boulevard proposed by developer Walter N. Marks, and a 125-room hotel and condominium complex at 639 South La Brea Avenue, north of the new Metro stop.

The media-shy Onni Group is run by the family of the late Inno De Cotiis, an immigrant to Canada from Italy who died in 2020.

Other Onni projects include the conversion of a Long Beach strip mall into multifamily housing, a 347-unit residential tower in the Arts District and the redevelopment of the former Los Angeles Times building in Downtown L.A.

— Dana Bartholomew

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