Jamison Services’ office-to-residential conversion spree in its home neighborhood of Koreatown continues to grow.
Jamison is looking to convert the existing 11-story Wilshire Park Plaza office building at 3700 Wilshire Boulevard into 370 apartments, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.
The plans to add housing to the site go back a decade. In 2016, Jamison kicked off an endeavor to redevelop the front lawn on the property with a 36-story, 506-unit residential tower. Those plans were met by efforts to designate the property as a local landmark, which effectively shelved the project.
The lawn fronting Wilshire Boulevard is often used for large gatherings, including recent World Cup celebrations. The property was originally developed in the 1960s as Beneficial Plaza and Liberty Park, with the building serving as the headquarters of Beneficial Standard Life Insurance Company.
Jamison has been pursuing office-to-residential projects elsewhere in Koreatown as the city faces increasing housing needs from a growing population and slowing production pipeline. Under its state-mandated housing goals, Los Angeles must plan for 456,643 new housing units by 2029.
The firm is turning the Pierce National Life Building nearby at 3807 Wilshire Boulevard into 210 apartments. Its efforts have grown beyond Koreatown and bled into the similarly housing-starved downtown. Over the past decade, the firm has converted more than 10 buildings in Koreatown and downtown into housing. Earlier this year, it began work on transforming a 33-story office tower at 1055 West Seventh Street into 686 apartments, and it is currently working in partnership with Kennedy Wilson to turn the World Trade Center office complex in downtown into 512 units of affordable housing.
Office-to-residential conversions made headlines this week with the structural failure that nearly brought down Pfizer’s former headquarters in New York City. That project, which developer Nathan Berman of MetroLoft told The Real Deal experienced “a freak accident,” is adding 11 new floors to the 1960-built building for a total of roughly 1,500 units once complete.
— Chris Malone Méndez
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