Firm Floats Single-Family-to-Multifamily Project in Pasadena

The Pasadena Design Commission is considering plans to convert single-family homes in the city into a multifamily housing development with nearly two dozen units.

Property owner LSJ Development presented its proposal for a corner lot at 1062 and 1072 East Villa Street and 445 and 459 North Wilson Avenue, looking to replace four single-family homes with a three-story complex consisting of 22 three-bedroom apartments, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.

The design for the project, handled by Eric Tsang Architects, utilizes Pasadena’s so-called “City of Gardens” typology. The City of Pasadena adopted the City of Gardens Ordinance in 1989, implementing a set of zoning regulations introducing courtyard housing as the sole multi-family type in transitional single-family neighborhoods. LSJ Development’s project, dubbed “Villa Soleil,” would include a centrally located rectangular courtyard.

The building’s height is limited to three stories “to ensure compatibility with the surrounding neighborhood,” according to documents filed with the City of Pasadena. Design and height have been sticking points for other multifamily projects in the city, including a proposal from developer K27 Capital for a 46-unit condominium project at 511 South Oak Knoll Avenue.

Last month, the Pasadena City Council unanimously denied an appeal against K27’s proposed four-story development that was filed by neighboring homeowners and argued that the nearly 60,000-square-foot project was out of scale with the surrounding neighborhood. The city council’s decision allows the project to move forward, but K27 cannot proceed without revising parts of its design to better align with Pasadena’s “City of Gardens” ordinance and reduce impacts on a prominent canyon live oak tree bordering the site.

LSJ’s Villa Soleil project must work its way through the city’s approval pipeline. A final vote on the concept is not currently scheduled, according to Urbanize.

Pasadena, like other municipalities in Greater Los Angeles, is in a race to meet its state-mandated housing goals in the coming years as demand outpaces new supply. By the end of this decade, Pasadena is required to plan for 9,429 new units of housing. With lofty goals looming across the state, cities like Pasadena often opt to greenlight multifamily developments such as Villa Soleil as a means of increasing housing production numbers as quickly as possible.

— Chris Malone Méndez