Pinelux Associates to convert Long Beach Bank into Homes

Pinelux Associates wants to turn a 118-year-old landmark office building known for its corner clocktower in Downtown Long Beach into 70 apartments.

The locally based investor led by Christopher Mata has filed plans to convert the six-story, 64,000-square-foot First National Bank Building into apartments at 115 Pine Avenue, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.

Plans call for converting the French Renaissance Revival landmark into 70 apartments, of which 11 would be set aside as affordable for low-income households. Pinelux also plans to install a 3,600-square-foot rooftop deck.

A cost and timeline for the proposed office-to-home conversion were not disclosed.

Pinelux bought the yellow brick building at auction in 2014 for $10.9 million, or $171 per square foot, according to CoStar.

The office building, designed by Robert Train and Robert Williams in 1906, is also known as the Metropolitan Building and the Enloe Building. It’s a City of Long Beach historic landmark and listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

In the 1950s, its landlords stripped it of its turn-of-the-century ornamentation. Then in the 1980s, federal tax incentives allowed its owner to restore its original look. For more than three decades, its ground floor has been home to L’Opera Ristorante.

“This is the best-preserved historic commercial building remaining in Long Beach from the period 1900-1919,” states a narrative from the Long Beach Community Development Department website.

The adaptive reuse project next to L.A. County Metro’s A-line terminus may be a sign of things to come in Downtown Long Beach, which like other commercial districts across the country, has faced rising vacancy rates following the pandemic, according to Urbanize.

Another adaptive reuse project could convert a 1970s high-rise at 400 Oceangate into housing.

Pinelux Associates was founded in 2014 by Matthew Luxenberg in a partnership with Alamitos Associates Management, based in Los Alamitos, according to state business records. It’s now based in Long Beach and led by Mata.

— Dana Bartholomew