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Proposed Arts District development would bring 475 apartments to the area

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Next to a forthcoming high-end retail and office complex called Row DTLA

Developer Mark Janda, the man trying to gentrify a stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, wants to put his next mark on the Arts District, a neighborhood that’s already filled with luxury lofts, craft breweries, and overpriced coffee. He filed plans Tuesday to build a whopping 475 live-work apartments at Alameda and 7th streets, the southern portion of the neighborhood.

Plans call for demolishing a cold storage warehouse and turning it into a complex that, in addition to holding housing (the plans say condos, but a spokesman for the developer says they'll be apartments), would have 703 parking spots and nearly 45,500 square feet of commercial space. Five percent of the units would be earmarked for tenants with very low incomes. The 3.8-acre property at 668 South Alameda Street was marketed by CBRE as, "one of the last remaining large, meaningful sites within this thriving neighborhood."

Thriving isn’t a word anyone would use to describe Santa Monica and Las Palmas, where Janda, through an LLC called AvalonBay, is poised to spend $375 million on a six-acre "megadevelopment" that is, "large enough...to be its own safe haven and even a catalyst for gentrification in the area."

The Arts District project site, on the other hand, would merely be joining a slew of redevelopment projects. It's very close to forthcoming Row DTLA, a collection of 100 high-end shops and restaurants inside renovated warehouses in Alameda Square. In the same area, there are plans for a nine-story office tower at 7th and Santa Fe and 240 live-work units in a building titled "Industrial," also at 7th and Alameda.