Tower replacing Hollywood Amoeba gets go-ahead from City Council

The Los Angeles City Council voted today to grant final approvals to the 26-story tower that would replace the Amoeba Records store on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

The council also voted to deny an appeal of the project brought by the Coalition to Preserve LA, which charged that the project should have included 15 percent affordable housing (not the 5 percent the developer has proposed) and that the city should not have deemed it a “Sustainable Communities Project,” a status that allows the developer to have a streamlined environmental review.

Developed by GPI Companies, the tower would hold 200 apartments, 10 of them for very low-income tenants, plus 7,000 square feet of retail space. The project would also hold 277 parking spaces in a podium along Sunset.

It’s unclear when construction is expected to start; plans had initially called for demolition on the site to begin sometime this year, but Amoeba’s current lease allows for them to stay put for roughly another year, the store’s co-owner Jim Henderson tells the Los Angeles Times.

Also uncertain is where the revered music store will go next. Amoeba had expressed its desire to stay in Hollywood and was reportedly looking at spaces early last year, but so far, a new location hasn’t been announced.

Amoeba sold the property to GPI in October 2015 for $34 million.