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Development
Los Angeles

Trammell Crow closes land purchase for DTLA apartments

Texas firm pays $26 million for site to build “The Alexan” in South Park

Rendering of 850 South Hill with Trammell Crow Residential's Ken Valach
Rendering of 850 South Hill with Trammell Crow Residential's Ken Valach (Trammell Crow Residential, DTLA)

Years after it first proposed a major apartment complex in South Park, Trammell Crow Residential has closed on a deal to buy a high-profile property in the emerging Downtown L.A. neighborhood. 

An entity tied to the company bought the 3-acre property at 850 South Hill Street for $26.2 million in late March, according to property records. The seller was Coast Prime Investments, a Sherman Oaks-based firm. 

Trammell Crow Residential, the development arm of the Dallas-based commercial giant, has eyed the site, a current surface parking lot at the corner of 9th and Hill, for a major apartment complex since at least 2014, when it inked a long-term lease. Early plans for the complex, dubbed “The Alexan,” called for a 26-story apartment tower that would include 305 luxury units and 7,000 square feet of ground floor retail space, and some estimates pointed to a 2018 completion for the sleek new high-rise. 

But by 2015, the project had stoked a local development battle, generating opposition from a Downtown L.A. neighborhood group that called itself the Society for the Preservation of Downtown Los Angeles, the L.A. Downtown News reported. Project opponents — who rejected the label of NIMBYism — objected to the Alexan’s height because it would loom over other buildings in Downtown L.A.’s Historic Core, including the Art Deco-style Eastern Columbia building on South Broadway. 

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“I’m a full believer in preserving the area,” Bill Cooper, a board member for the group, told the Downtown News at the time. “There are already projects going up that are watering down the area.” 

In 2017, the project scored one victory when the city’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee rejected the group’s appeal. 

But Trammell Crow Residential still doesn’t have a full green light: The 26-story story plan “is still clearing conditions with City Planning,” a representative for the department wrote in an email. 

Representatives for Crow Holdings, parent corporation of Trammell Crow Residential, did not respond to a request for comment. Last July, the firm won approvals for another project called “The Alexan” in Arcadia. 

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