An appeal application has been filed against approvals for an eight-story, 262-unit mixed-use project in the Wilshire Center area at 3020 Wilshire Boulevard, according to documents posted this month by the city of Los Angeles.
The appeal paperwork was filed on Wednesday by Enrique Velasquez on behalf of Coalition for an Equitable Westlake/MacArthur Park, which argues in documents that the project is neither compliant with The Wilshire Center/Koreatown Recovery Redevelopment Project nor eligible for the exemption from CEQA environmental review it was given last month.
“The city fails to evaluate the indirect displacement of low-income residents caused by the influx of market rate units,” the appellant writes in its appeal justification. “The project fails to provide any affordable units that would be accessible to low-income individuals.”
The coalition also writes that the CEQA exemption was unjustified because of cumulative effects by the project and surrounding projects.
In the determination letter giving the project approvals last month, planning staff request that the project developer, Jamison Properties, be aware of the Wilshire Center/Koreatown Redevelopment Plan’s affordable housing requirement that 15 percent of units be affordable to low- and moderate-income households.
Noted below that request is a response from the development team saying that the aforementioned plan applies to the area as a whole during the plan’s duration, which extends to 2026, but “does not apply to or require affordable units for individual projects …”
“Adding affordable units to the proposed project would make the Project financially infeasible because of the resulting increase in development and construction costs (due to shift to high rise construction),” the response also adds. “The continuing impact of COVID-19 on daily life has also exacerbated concerns about longer-term financial impacts on commercial and residential leasing.”
Jamison didn’t respond to request for comment.
The Los Angeles planning department said in a statement in response to the appellant’s claim that “the project is not required to include any affordable housing units” and that it wouldn’t cause displacement.
“In place of a commercial building containing zero residential units, this project would provide 262 brand-new market-rate units,” the statement read.
If the planning department’s determination is sustained by the city, Jamison’s project will replace a two-story building that has held a mix of church, dining, school, and office uses at the southeastern corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Wilshire Place. Plans call for 16 studios, 211 one-bedrooms, and 35 two-bedrooms over about 10,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space split evenly between east and west stores facing Wilshire Boulevard.
The project would also provide 367 automobile parking spaces in an underground and above-ground parking garage, 272 bicycle spaces, about 28,000 square feet of usable open space, and 66 new trees, according to the determination letter.
County property data shows that an affiliate of Jamison Properties acquired the project site for $13.5 million in 2014.
The proposed building was designed by Togawa Smith Martin.
