Work to build major West LA development to begin next month

Right on schedule, developers of a mixed-use development at Bundy and Olympic are planning to begin to clear the site starting in November, a project representative tells Curbed.

The Martin family, which owned and operated the the Martin Cadillac and GMC car dealership on the site now for more than four decades, is partnering with the Houston-based developer Hines to build the complex, now called West Edge, but previously known as Martin Expo Town Center. The project would rise about a block from the Expo/Bundy Expo Line station.

West Edge is one of the most high-profile projects cropping up on the Westside along the Expo Line.

Dan Martin of Philena Properties, which is owned by the Martin family, says the plan is to begin construction in January.

The Gensler-designed complex will hold more than 500 apartments, plus retail space, a grocery store, and a 10-story office building. Twenty percent of West Edge’s 516 apartments will be available at below-market rates. (15 percent will be workforce housing for tenants making 150 percent of the area median income or less; five percent will be available to low income households.)

The development will also bring pedestrian-oriented upgrades intended to better connect people on foot to the nearby Expo Line. Those additions include widened sidewalks and a pedestrian plaza at Olympic and Bundy.

Urbanize LA reported Tuesday that the car dealership had closed its doors. Martin says that is because the car dealership business, which was sold in 2017, has relocated. The new owners, Roundtree Automotive Group, moved the Buick/GMC dealership to Santa Monica and the Cadillac business to Beverly Hills.

Work on the Martin Expo Town Center was originally expected to get underway last year, but those plans were put on hold when a local group named Westsiders Opposed to Overdevelopment sued the project in 2016. A decision was reached in October 2018 that Martin said cleared the way for the project to get underway. At the time, they expected work to begin about now—late 2019. Construction is expected to take about three years.

About a mile to the east of the site, Carmel Partners is building a nearly 600-unit apartment complex called Linea on a four-acre site next to the Expo/Sepulveda station. In Culver City, the under-construction Ivy Station is hard to miss. When it’s complete, it will hold 200 apartment units, 240,000 square feet of office space, and a 148-room hotel.