Culver City has spent the last decade by widening its sidewalks, building parking garages, and generally encouraging pedestrians, diners, and bar crawlers to return to its charming downtown. The good times keep rolling for the former drive-through city, with new developments--many spurred by the city's new Expo Line station--finally starting to move forward. But while things are overall pretty rosy in Sony-land, the Los Angeles Business Journal (sub. req.) reports that some projects are still caught in redevelopment hell, aka ownership limbo, following the state dissolution of city redevelopment agencies. But if all the proposed projects, valued at $350 million, come together, Culver City's east end would "add about 430,000 square feet of office space, 195,000 square feet of retail, 315 apartment units and 150 hotel rooms." So here's where some of Culver City's biggest new developments stand, mapped:
Read More:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/48740115/curbed_placeholder.54.0.jpg)
Mapping Culver City's Development Boom: The Good, The Moving, and The Stalled
Access Culver City
The Good: Last week, Greystar Real Estate broke ground on Access Culver City, one of the first transit-oriented projects built along the Expo Line. The project, designed by Togawa Smith Martin Residential, will bring 115 apartments, 31,000 square feet of retail, and a 7,000 square foot public plaza to the parcel kitty-corner to the station next year.
Hayden Tract office developments
The Good: The former industrial areas in eastern Culver City known as Hayden Tract and Smiley Blackwelder are coming alive thanks to a new parking district overlay making them hotspots for creative office space. Priced out of Santa Monica and Venice, media and tech firms--like Beats Electronics, Inside.com, and PopSugar--are setting up shop or relocating to this central area. Hackman Capital Partners is turning several industrial buildings in the Hayden Tract into even more creative office space. Near the freeway and the Metro, and halfway between DTLA and the beach, the area has many draws of its own and the city is helping by facilitating more parking and working to lay down high-speed fiber-optic cable throughout Culver City. Meanwhile, the nearby Helms Bakery complex, closer to the rail stop, is also seeing an infusion of new restaurants and shops.
The Platform
The Moving: The Runyon Group's long-anticipated The Platform retail project is lifting off this month. Those big murals that decorated the defunct adjacent car dealerships are on their way out and the car lots are getting demolished by the end of October. In their place will be six freestanding buildings housing an array of high-end, non-chainy stores and restaurants, including a store from Nevena Borissova and a rooftop restaurant from New York chef Michael White.
Lowe mixed-use development
The Stalled: The project proposed for the current Expo parking lot is in a holding pattern as developer Lowe Enterprises tries to take ownership of the entire parcel. After Governor Brown killed local redevelopment agencies, a piece of the property went into ownership purgatory. When everything gets settled--hopefully in a maximum of two years--Lowe intends to build a four-story office building, 200 apartments, a 150-room hotel, 75,000 square feet of retail, and a public transit plaza and park.
Parcel B
The Stalled: Redevelopment agency woes also haunt the Parcel B project, which would construct a 115,000-square-foot office/retail project across from the Culver Hotel. Currently a surface parking lot that kills downtown's pedestrian flow, the Parcel B project from Combined Properties and Hudson Pacific includes a distinctive outdoor staircase that would lead up to a floor of restaurants.
Loading comments...