Investors Plan 88-Unit Normandie Avenue Project In Opportunity Zone

A pair of property owners have plans for an 88-unit multifamily project at 100-118 S. Normandie Ave. in a Central Los Angeles Opportunity Zone census tract, according a planning department case filed this month. The applicant is listed as Jonathan Harouni of Normandie 110 LLC, which owns the project site along with 100 Normandie Avenue QOZB PropCo LLC, a company registered to commercial real estate executive Randy Banchik, business filings with the state of California show.

The four-parcel project site currently contains two single-family residences, a duplex, and a fourplex, each of which would be demolished to make way for a new 81,702-square-foot, approximately 71-foot-tall residential building. The project applicant is seeking Tier-2 project incentives under the city’s transit-oriented communities program, including a density bonus on top of the 61 units otherwise allowed by base zoning, 20-percent open-space reduction from 10,125 to 8,100 square feet, and reductions in required yard sizes.

Dubbed Normandie Residence in planning filings, the project would contain six studios, 29 one-bedrooms, and 53 two-bedrooms and provide 96 parking stalls in an at-grade and below-grade garage. Designs also call for 82 bicycle parking spots and an amenity package including a 1,019-square-foot gym, 1,202-square-foot courtyard, 621 square-foot recreation room, and a 4,441-square-foot roof deck, which itself would offer lounge furniture, outdoor dining areas, and dipping pools.

The four residential properties making up the project site were purchased in a series of transactions totaling $5.5 million, according to county assessor records from between 2019 and 2020. Located in a federally designated Opportunity Zone, the project could offer long-term investors federal tax breaks as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Per its Tier-2 TOC request, the developer is planning on setting aside 10 units, or about 11 percent of the six-story project’s total, for extremely low-income households.

Harouni and Banchik are joined by project representative Gary Benjamin, who is the president of consulting firm Alchemy Planning + Land Use, as well as project architect Kevin Tsai Architecture.