Onni’s 429-unit apartment complex for Vine Street in Hollywood revealed

New renderings give a peek at what the building would look like

By Jenna Chandler@jennakchandler Jun 22, 2017, 12:06pm PDT

Developer Onni Group has filed plans to erect a huge apartment complex near the ArcLight Hollywood, and thanks to a new environmental impact report, first spotted by Urbanize LA, we’re getting our first look at what the building might look like if it materializes.

If ultimately approved by the city, the tower would measure 475,433 square feet and rise up to 20 stories (that’s about 262.5 feet) on 1.86 acres at 1360 North Vine Street, at the intersection of DeLongpre.

The new building would hold 429 apartments, a grocery store, shops and stores fronting Vine, nearly 9,000 square feet of restaurants, and an underground parking garage for at least 677 cars. The apartments would be a mix of studios, one- and two-bedrooms, and five penthouses.

Onni is asking for a 35-percent density bonus increase in exchange for designating 16 of the units for tenants with very low incomes. It would build another 19 low-income units off-site.

The environmental impact report says the new tower’s proposed height is shorter than Sunset Vine Tower and Sunset Media Center.

On the site now are six bungalows that are part of the Afton Square District, which is listed on the California Register of historic places. (The district includes architect Leland Bryant’s beautiful, ivy-covered Afton Arms.)

Onni wants to relocate the bungalows on the site, and either keep them as residences or convert them to restaurants—changes that LA preservationists Richard Schave and Kim Cooper say, “destroys historical context and changes the streetscape.”

“As for the tower, it looks like the framing of a Las Vegas high rise hotel overlooking a swimming pool, but in this case the swimming pool is a neighborhood,” Schave says. “Afton Place between Vine and El Centro is a quaint Hollywood residential block, that includes a spiritual center which dates back to the 1950s, and this massive development which is going to tower over it, will negatively alter this ecology.”

The site as it looks today. The six historic bungalows are pictured to the right.

The stepped tower would grow taller from west to east, with 13,155 square feet of landscaped public open space located between the high-rise and relocated bungalows.