Planning commission approves Arts District development with private club

The city planning commission today approved a plan to add five stories to a short 1920s building in the Arts District, the first hurdle towards to creating a dynamic new mixed-user in the neighborhood.

The development, designed by architecture firm wHY architecture, would hold artist studios, an eatery, retail, a private club and its many member amenities, and a robot parking garage. The additional stories would add about 64,000 square feet of space.

Preserving the building makes for a visually exciting new project. Renderings show the existing structure melting into a glassy structure set back from the front of the old warehouse. Rising above the extant structure would be a large boxy glass structure with the additional floors.

Proposed by developers Est4te Four, the project would rise above the existing two-story Challenge Cream and Butter Company building at Second and Vignes. It was reportedly one of the first old buildings legally converted to housing under the Artist-in-Residence (AIR). The ordinance was adopted when the Arts District was still made up of shabby, crumbling warehouses that artists were living in illegally. It was not the high-rent district it is now.

The project at 929 East Second Street is far from the only one underway in this part of the Arts District, which continues to be a development hotspot. About a block south of this spot, 472 apartments and 22,000 square feet of retail space in a mixed-user from Legendary Development is scheduled to come online next year.

• Fresh renderings of Arts District’s Second and Vignes project with private club [Curbed LA]