Millennium Partners reboots $1B Los Angeles mixed-use high-rise project

Dive Brief:

Developer Millennium Partners has resurrected a stalled $1 billion mixed-use development planned for the famed Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles, and the proposal has a new focus on residential rather than commercial and retail, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The reworked project, which will include two skyscrapers – 35 and 46 stories – and two 11-story mid-rise buildings, will double housing capacity from 492 residential units to more than 1,000. A little more than 130 units will be set aside for seniors with low income and very-low income. In order to alleviate community concern over increased traffic congestion caused by the project, developers will put parking underground and include Uber and self-driving car stations. The project will also feature 30,000 square feet of retail and open green spaces but a plan was ditched for 100,000 square feet of offices and a gym.
The state has concerns about building because an inactive seismic fault is located deep under the property, but the developers and city officials, who have the final word, maintain there is no risk.

Dive Insight:

Millennium Partners has no doubt considered the pushback that other high-density projects proposed for Los Angeles have received, and reconfigured its design to include more community-friendly elements like green space and affordable housing. Last year, local activists failed to win a two-year moratorium on high-density projects, but still advocate against individual projects and have been able to delay or stop them altogether.

The Friends of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative recently helped kill a 27-story, 269-unit residential building in the Koreatown area of the Los Angeles, reported GlobeSt.com, on the grounds that the city did not require developers to submit an environmental impact report. At the heart of the controversy, though, was that the proposed building did not blend into the lower-rise structures in the neighborhood.

Millennium Partners is no stranger to controversy, however. In San Francisco, its luxury Millennium Tower property has been sinking and tilting since construction wrapped up and there are plenty of lawsuits to go around. Safety issues have emerged and engineers, if soil test results are acceptable, will add additional pilings through the basement in an effort to anchor the building to bedrock.

The $550 million fix will see pilings driven on one side first, allowing the building to continue to sink on the other. Then, when the structure is as plumb as it can get, crews will anchor the other side. The whole process could take as many as five years, according to the company.