Continuum Partners wants to cancel a hotel and build fewer condominiums and more apartments at its $2 billion project in Downtown Los Angeles.
The Denver-based developer led by Mark Falcone has filed revised plans for its 10-building Fourth & Central project at 400 South Central Avenue, in Skid Row next to the Arts District, Urbanize Los Angeles reported. It would replace three historic cold-storage warehouses.
Plans for the 7.6-acre project, designed by Long Beach-based Studio One Eleven, had called for more than 1,500 homes, 410,000 square feet of offices, plus a 68-room hotel, along with shops and restaurants. An environmental review was launched in early 2022.
Continuum has decided to jettison plans for the 68-room boutique hotel, while offering fewer condos and more rental apartments.
Its new plan calls for 1,444 apartments and 123 for-sale condominiums, replacing a plan to build 949 rental units and 572 condos, with at least 214 units set aside as affordable housing for low-income households.
It’s not clear how many affordable units are included in the upgraded plan.
“We have engaged in extensive dialogue with our neighbors in Little Tokyo, the Arts District and the Industrial District, and those productive conversations have guided us to make several meaningful adjustments to the Fourth & Central project,” Falcone, founder and CEO of Continuum, said in a statement.
The new plan for Fourth & Central decreases the size of the David Adjaye-designed residential highrise on the north side of the project site to 30 stories, from 44 stories, in response to community concerns, according to the Los Angeles Times.
But the project, announced in 2021, would provide more housing than originally proposed by adding a 26-story, 250-unit residential tower on the south side of Fourth Street, in place of the canceled hotel.
In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an order to shorten the window for any environmental lawsuits against the project at Fourth Street and Central Avenue, hastening its approval.
The state has certified Fourth & Central as an Environmental Leadership Development Project, meaning any legal challenge to the project under the California Environmental Quality Act must be decided within 270 days, potentially shaving months off the project’s timeline.
Challenges to the project, environmental or otherwise, may come from residents concerned about a gentrification of Skid Row and its potential to displace low-income residents. Groups from Little Tokyo are concerned it would reduce the neighborhood’s role as the historic center of the region’s Japanese community.
Continuum Partners, founded in 1997, has joined in the Arts District’s recent building boom, completing an office building near the Sixth Street Viaduct in 2021, according to Urbanize.
— Dana Bartholomew
Read more
Residential
Los Angeles
Gavin Newsom trims legal red tape for $2B mega-project in DTLA
Development
Los Angeles
Continuum Partners plans $2B megaproject to transform Arts District