A neighborhood resident and labor union have filed an appeal against the Los Angeles City Council’s approval of a 121-unit, 125-key hotel mixed-use project planned for 629 S. La Brea Ave., according to an appeal application filed with the city this week. The appellants are shown as Margaret Flores, Maya Barron, and UNITE HERE Local 11, who are appealing the entirety of an October City Council determination that gave the project environmental clearance and approvals.
The project applicant for the 629 S. La Brea Ave. development, which is slated for just north of Wilshire Blvd. at 623-671 S. La Brea Ave., is La Brea Bliss LLC, an entity registered to the Woodland Hills office of real estate investment company CGI Strategies. The reason for the appeal of the city’s decision isn’t specified in the appeal application, but the document was filed with an attached copy of a 30-day rent increase notice addressed to one of the appellants by their landlord.
If the appeal is denied by the city planning department and the project is moved forward, it will contain six three-bedroom units, 37 two-bedrooms, and 78 one-bedrooms, with 14 units, or about 11 percent of the total, set aside for extremely low-income households. With its affordable component and its location one block from the under-construction Wilshire/La Brea subway station, the development received approvals for Tier-4 project incentives under the city’s transit-oriented communities program, affording it an 80-percent density bonus, among other incentives.
Designs for the eight-story building call for seven residential and hotel levels over one level of ground-floor residential and hotel lobbies and more than 13,000-square-feet of commercial uses, as well as two levels of subterranean parking. Between those two levels and surface-level parking, the project calls for 185 parking spaces, along with 158 bicycle spaces.
Others involved in the project include project architect Togawa Smith Martin and entitlements consulting company three6ixty.
An affiliate of CGI Strategies acquired much of the total project site at 625-637 S. La Brea Ave. through a series of transactions totaling around $16 million, according to county records from 2018 and 2019.
Figures, NIMBY Unite Here #11 doesn’t want anything to happen if it means improving the lives of the poor who may seek one of the 14 units set aside for the extremely poor. Los Angeles is far behind in housing as a whole and fails to provide enough already as it is. Unite Here 11 is trying to parlay more misery if they haven’t already in other quadrants of the city where they use unorthodox methods of opposing new developments that we desperately need! Maybe if the leadership of Unite Here 11 did the math and saw that constructing more housing and hotel rooms will bring prices down and create a competitive market where average citizens can actually afford the outrageous rents that exist because of the extreme demand for homes! If I remember correctly it was NIMBYS that caused the California housing crisis in the first place! We need to demand better from our California politicians who will make it easier to build to house our multiplying population! Not prevent it! We have seen enough of the tent cities caused by the groups like Unite Here 11!