Crest Real Estate Launches Case Study 2.0 Program

Backen & Backen’s single-level home design in muted, earthy tones could work for an Altadena or Pacific Palisades lot. Solkatt’s Altadena concept offers a striking pitched roof with an exterior of seam metal panels. AAHA Studio’s idea for a home employs a courtyard out front that, if built next to a property of the same design, could create a shared gathering space in line with the Palisades tight-knit community.

Those three companies are among more than 40 architectural firms that comprise the Case Study 2.0 program being led by Los Angeles land use firm Crest Real Estate to tackle fire rebuilding efforts. The full roster of home designs officially launches to the public Thursday.

Case Study 2.0’s aim is to expedite the permitting and construction process in the fire-ravaged areas of the Pacific Palisades, Altadena and Malibu, while lowering costs through economies of scale. Beneath the program’s surface is a test of the city and county of Los Angeles’ promise to get residents back into their homes quickly amid the combined wreckage of over 11,000 homes destroyed by the Palisades and Eaton fires in January.

To move forward, the architectural community looked back to the post-World War II housing boom.

Within that flurry of building activity was the original Case Study program created by Arts & Architecture magazine editor John Entenza. Architects were charged with drafting home designs that were not only aesthetically pleasing but could be produced at a low cost on a mass scale.

“What’s happening right now is you have people coming back and doing their custom homes and they’re going to be beautiful,” said Jason Somers, co-founder and president at Crest. “Then you also have developers coming in with more of a tract-building mindset, which is really important because we’ve lost so many homes. But those may not be at the same level of architectural fit and finish that would make these communities feel homey. So, the Case Study program tries to fill that gap.”

Case Study 2.0 looks to bypass the homogeneity associated with master-planned communities, while waiving the oftentimes stressful decision-making process involved in a custom home.

The program’s architects drafted their plans for eight of the most common lot sizes pro bono and are making those available at a roughly 25 percent discount, which equates to $25 per square foot.

When residents select a design from Case Study 2.0, they shave off three to five months spent in the initial design phase. Once a design is created, a standard plan goes to the city for pre-approval, which is a four- to six-month process. However, once that first standard plan has been approved, subsequent homes of the same design should be able to obtain a permit in two months, Crest estimated.

A similar kind of muscle memory can be applied in the construction phase.

“Once this model is operating at scale the plan is to have a specific contractor building each design,” said Steven Somers, Crest co-founder and CEO and Jason’s brother. “That way the contractor will be able to replicate and build multiples of a design and achieve economies of scale.”

The Case Study 2.0 group has also struck agreements with supply partners for finishes, appliances and other elements at reduced prices, Steven said.

So far so good

On Jan. 13, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced an executive order to erect a “one-stop-shop” concept for permitting that housed representatives from the Department of Building and Safety, Department of City Planning, Department of Water and Power and other functions under one roof to streamline the development and permitting process.

Jason and Steven described the city of Los Angeles, which issues permits for Palisades residents, as being “excellent” so far in getting approvals through.

Crest alone has nearly 100 projects in the pipeline, but only a small percentage have been ready to actually submit to the city.

Across communities most of what’s been approved, Jason explained, is for homes that were built in the last decade in which the homeowner or their architectural firm still had the plans on hand to resubmit for city approval. In many other cases, no plans exist and architecture firms are spending time playing detectives in drawing up drafts.

“I think the next six months to a year that’s when you’re going to see the heavy load [of permit applications] coming through and that’s when it’s really important the city stays up to their current speed in what they’ve been promising residents to help with the rebuild,” Jason said. “That’s why it’s so important that the Case Study program is providing standard plans so that when a project goes in a second time, it’s straight through the system.”

Next step

Los Angeles-based architecture and interior design firm AAHA Studio has four properties it’s working on in the Palisades in various stages of planning and anticipates adding Altadena projects to its workload in the future. One of the current clients is a homeowner that moved into their property in October. They plan to build the exact same structure with some renovations to their backyard.

Two or three days after the fire began, AAHA Studio took the plans it already had on hand for that property, updated the date on the drawings and went to the city to see what would happen as a kind of stress test. This was before the mayor’s Jan. 13 executive order, and the plans were immediately kicked back.

“They didn’t have the process in place yet,” said Aaron Leshtz, co-founder of AAHA. “That was a test case. We had this thing ready to go with a bow on it and it didn’t quite go right back in as we expected.”

“But that’s not for lack of anything on the [part of the] city. The home is ready to be approved,” said Leshtz’s wife and AAHA’s co-founder, Harper Halprin, clarifying the alterations in the rear yard are being reworked.

As the recovery process moves into its next phase, it places developers and architects such as AAHA now on the front lines of shepherding homeowners through the next rebuilding stage.

They’re working with clients that never intended to be wrapped up in a major construction project.

“Normally in a typical project you’ve got someone that has thought a very long time about what their dream home might be and they’ve mulled over that process, got their inspiration, got the names of architects and it’s been percolating for some time,” Leshtz said. “This puts 12,000 people into a position where they’re saying, ‘OK, we’ need to rebuild right now.’ That’s not something they were thinking about necessarily.”

Halprin added even with the clients that move fast and know what they want, that can sometimes be a six- to seven-month process. For those that move at a slower pace, the design process can sometimes take a year.

Ultimately, the hope of Crest and the Case Study 2.0 architects is that offering a catalog of designs to choose from might help take some of the stress off homeowners.

“One of the issues the Case Study program can solve,” Leshtz said, “is those people that are not emotionally ready to go through the process of a custom home, this allows an out-of-the-box solution that is not just a cookie-cutter model home.”