Akhilesh and Janet Jha Look to Build Units in Wilmington

Husband-and-wife development team Akhilesh and Janet Jha have filed an application to build a project with 120 residential units in Wilmington, a neighborhood in Los Angeles’ Harbor area.

It’s the latest entry in the Jhas’ pipeline portfolio, which favors projects in which apartments replace single-family homes and employ a novel legal strategy to gain approval.

In Wilmington, documents filed with the City of Los Angeles Planning Department call for demolishing existing buildings at 1026-1042 North Wilmington Boulevard. This stretch of street is currently the site of a 1,440-square-foot two-bedroom home at 1036 Wilmington Drive, a 2,940-square-foot commercial space at 1026 North Wilmington, as well as two undeveloped lots.

The Jhas propose to construct a new nine-story building with 108 market-rate units, 12 affordable units and 2,293 square feet of commercial space.

Wilmington, a district heavy on industrial real estate, could shift to a residential development hub. Los Angeles’ Housing Element — the city’s plan for home-building approved by the state — calls for building 47,200 homes in the Wilmington area. Many of these residences would be in multifamily developments, according to a recently published Urbanize story on updates in zoning rules for Wilmington and Harbor Gateway.

The Jhas have made waves for getting green lights to build multifamily buildings on sites of single-family homes. A Los Angeles Times story published in August contended that Jha’s tall buildings would have never received approvals from planning commissions if the city was not so hungry to develop more housing.

If the Jhas timing is good to develop multifamily, they also have used their knowledge of planning law to steer projects to approvals.

A 2021 blog post by pro-development group Yimby Law wrote about the Jhas’ application to build a multifamily building at 5353 Del Moreno Drive in Woodland Hills. The blog said that a planning commissioner rejected the application because it was inconsistent with neighborhood zoning regulations for low density,

According to the blog, Akhilesh Jha and Yimby lawyers argued that the application was consistent with the city’s General Plan rules on building denser projects, and that would take precedence over neighborhood zoning,

“Cities therefore have no way out,” the blog states. “If the city claims the zoning is inconsistent, then a project sponsor can basically ignore the zoning, and only look to the standards and criteria in the General Plan.”

Other Jha projects include 45 townhomes located at 13916 Polk Street in the Sylmar area of the San Fernando Valley and a 33-unit building at 1848 South Gramercy Place in the Harvard Heights section of Koreatown, according to media reports.