Optimus Properties gets go-ahead for Pico Rivera apartments

Optimus Properties has won approval to build a 255-unit apartment complex in Pico Rivera.

The Century City-based developer has received a conditional use permit, a zone reclassification and a general plan amendment needed to construct the mixed-use complex at 8825 Washington Boulevard, Urbanize Los Angeles reported. 

Plans call for a six-story building with 255 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments above 5,700 square feet of ground-floor shops and restaurants.

The complex, to be dubbed The Mercury on account of the former Mercury car plant at the site, will include an interior parking garage for 464 cars.

While a project website once said 13 apartments would be set aside as affordable housing for moderate-income tenants, the page no longer makes that claim.

The brown, white and gray building, designed by Danielian Associates, would be a “wrap-style” complex surrounded by balconies with teal highlights. It will include a landscaped courtyard and a 17,000-square-foot rooftop deck and pool.

New walkways will feed into the Pico Rivera Marketplace shopping center next door at Washington and Rosemead boulevards.

Construction is expected to take two years, though a starting date was not disclosed.

The Mercury will be built on 2.8 acres on the site of the former Ford Motor Company plant, which opened in 1957 and made 1.4 million Mercury’s, Comets and other Ford brands, according to local historians. After it closed in 1980, the site was acquired by Northrop Grumman, where it designed and manufactured components for the B-2 stealth bomber.

Optimus Properties, founded in 2007 by brothers K. Joseph and Kamyar Shabani, and has invested in multifamily, office and commercial properties.

In June, the company bought 91 apartments in seven buildings in Koreatown and Echo Park for undisclosed terms.

In 2019, Optimus Properties paid $22 million for a 10-story medical office building next to Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center in Tarzana.

— Dana Bartholomew