92 apartments planned for Westwood Boulevard
By Dolores Quintana
RBM of California’s apartment development project proposed for 2107-2121 S. Westwood Boulevard has been granted a CEQA exemption by the Los Angeles City Council as reported by Urbanize Los Angeles. The vote to designate the development as a Sustainable Communities Project, which exempts the development from an Environmental Impact Review, which would have reported on the effects that the development might have on the community will be bypassed.
The project would build a mixed-use, five-story building that would contain a total of 92 apartments, one, two and three bedrooms, and a 125 space underground parking lot with two levels as well as a 1,553 square foot commercial space on the ground floor.
This is the second version of the development proposal. The first version was residential only and not mixed-use with a total of 109 apartments. That proposal originally sought Transit Oriented Community based incentives. This version has added commercial space and seeks a state density bonus which would allow the structure to be larger than current local zoning ordinances allow and does not require the developer to set aside as many apartments as very low-income deed-restricted units. The TOC incentive would have required 14 of the apartments to be reserved for lower-income families and the state entitlement would only require 8 apartments to be reserved while allowing exemptions to zoning restrictions and would require the approval of the City Planning Commission as it is being considered as a separate entitlement application.
Both of the proposals were designed by DE Architects and construction should take about 28 months to complete. The developer RBM of California is a subsidiary of the Japanese development corporation that is also developing other mixed-use projects in Palms and Mid-Wilshire.
