Revel and Leo Pustilnikov team to set up EV charging station in DTLA

Revel and developer Leo Pustilnikov want to build a 19,000-square-foot charging station for electric cars in Downtown Los Angeles.

The Brooklyn-based developer of EV infrastructure has leased a parking lot for the future station at 1233 South Grand Avenue, in South Park, the Commercial Observer reported, citing property records. 

The landlord of the lot is Pustilnikov, owner of Beverly Hills-based SLH Investments. Terms of the lease were not disclosed. 

Broker Max Rattner of Reliance Real Estate Advisors handled the deal.

All new cars sold in the state must be zero-emission vehicles by 2035, according to a government mandate. To accommodate the expected surge in electric vehicles, Revel plans to install 42 EV charging hook-ups on the lot near Crypto.com Arena, LA Live and the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Revel now operates the largest EV charging footprint in New York, where it was founded in 2018. 

The company has 54 public charging stations across three sites in Brooklyn and Queens, with plans to quadruple that network by the middle of next year with new projects in Maspeth, Queens, Lower Manhattan and at LaGuardia Airport, according to the Observer.

The firm also has seven station sites under development in the San Francisco Bay region. 

“In the next two years, we’ll have 1,000 fast chargers open across New York City, the Bay Area and Los Angeles,” Frank Reig, Revel CEO said in a statement. “This infrastructure will close the urban charging gap and allow everyone from rideshares and last-mile delivery fleets, to everyday drivers, to electrify.”

Nearly 1.2 million electric vehicles were sold in the U.S. last year, according to Kelley Blue Book.

The federal government also recently boosted incentives for commercial landlords to provide charging stations for tenants in the wake of rising demand, while proptech firms are trying to capitalize on the growing trend, according to the Observer.

Pustilnikov, a pioneer of using the state legal loophole known as the builder’s remedy that allows developers to skirt zoning in cities with uncertified state housing plans, has mixed-use projects in the works in Beverly Hills and Redondo Beach. In the past decade, he estimates having completed more than $1 billion in real estate deals, according to a profile by The Real Deal.

— Dana Bartholomew

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