Demolition underway on South LA’s Vermont and Manchester site seized by county

Demolition has begun on the last structure left on a long-unused property at Vermont and Manchester that county officials have seized using eminent domain.

The site in South Los Angeles is being cleared for a complex that will hold 180 units of affordable housing, a public boarding school, a transit plaza and bus transfer center, and retail.

The property was previously owned by developer Eli Sasson. In the decades that Sasson had owned the property, his proposed projects for the site failed to materialize, and critics claimed the property had become a nuisance.

Last month, a judge ruled that the county could take the property by eminent domain and use it for the mixed-use project.

“Now that we have site control, our focus will be to design all of this with community engagement, including identifying immediate opportunities to activate the site,” county supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said in a statement released earlier this month.

Solicitation processes have begun to find an operator for the school and a developer for the mixed-use component of the project.

“We now have an opportunity to create a bright future,” said Ridley-Thomas.

• LA County can seize vacant property at Vermont/Manchester, says court [Curbed LA]
• First look at new county development planned for long-vacant Vermont/Manchester lot [Curbed LA]
• Construction still hasn’t started on a fancy outdoor mall planned for South LA [Curbed LA]