A 1.5-acre piece of vacant land — already entitled for a large senior housing project — has hit the market in Warner Center, an area of the San Fernando Valley that for decades has been slated as a focal point for urban projects.
“They really are encouraging dense, high-rise construction around here, whereas in other parts of L.A., it’s really hard to get any real density,” said Adam Peterson, a broker with CBRE who shares the listing. “This is the one place where the door’s kind of wide open.”
The site is formally unpriced, Peterson said.
The property is located at 6033 De Soto Avenue, inside the Warner Center master-planned district. The 1.5-square-mile district, which straddles the neighborhoods of Woodland Hills and Canoga Park, was first envisioned in the 1970s as a new urban hub, or downtown, for the mostly suburban San Fernando Valley.
While the full “Downtown of the Valley” vision hasn’t materialized, the area is now home to a collection of high and mid-rise office buildings, hotels and the Kaiser Permanente Hospital, among other projects, and has recently reemerged as a development hotspot. Last year Stan Kroenke, the developer and billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Rams, bought two dead malls in the area for a combined $500 million. He plans to convert one into a new Rams headquarters and practice facility.
And as L.A. continues to suffer from a housing supply crisis, city planners are pushing for the district as a center of higher density building. The Warner Center 2035 master plan emphasizes pedestrian zones and plans for 30 million square feet of commercial space and more than 26,000 residential units.
Property records show the De Soto Avenue property is owned by an entity affiliated with CA Ventures, a Chicago-based investment and development firm with mixed-use and multifamily projects, including senior housing projects, around the U.S. and in Europe. The firm bought the site from Calabasas-based Ram Property Management for $11.4 million in late 2021.
The site is currently entitled for a seven-story, nearly 200,000-square-foot senior housing project, and is likely to sell to either another senior housing developer or a multi-family developer, Peterson said.
“The multifamily guys will probably want more time [to get new entitlements], whereas a seniors group, if they want to take it and run it’s ready to be designed and permitted.”
The owners’ decision to list was driven by a broader economic climate, the broker added, which has affected institutional senior housing projects. “A lot of the equity has run for the hills,” he said of the broader trend.
A representative for CA Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.
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