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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Apartment Project Homes In on Luxury Service

Developer Shawn Evenhaim is on a mission with his new residential project. He wants to introduce the San Fernando Valley to true full-service luxury living – and he’s not just hiring a doorman. “I’m talking about having a full concierge staff running the building,” said Evenhaim, chief executive of California Home Builders in Canoga Park. “This kind of thing doesn’t exist outside of Hollywood and the Westside.” The proposed 250-plus-unit apartment complex would be built at the site of the former Panavision Inc. headquarters at Erwin Street and Variel Avenue in Woodland Hills. He envisions a valet service to park cars and drive them around front when residents go out. Or they might opt for the in-house chauffeur service or bicycle concierge instead. If it is approved by city planners, the 3.2-acre project will break ground sometime next year. It will consist of luxury rental units on the upper stories and ground-floor space for retailers such as a grocer, restaurant, delicatessen and coffeehouse. That will be a contrast to much of the recent boom in Warner Center residential development, which has added badly needed housing but very little walkable commercial space. “We’re seeing all these units going up in Warner Center but there are no services provided for them,” Evenhaim said. Included in the complex along with the requisite pool and fitness center will be a twist on the popular live-work concept, with office space that residents and others can rent on a monthly or yearly basis to conduct business on the premises but not actually in their living quarters. “It’s a model that has been very successful, where there are several private offices and a common area that can be reserved as a conference room,” Evenhaim said. California Home Builders, a division of Evenhaim Industries Corp., acquired the property for an undisclosed price in November from REW De Soto Partners, a Malibu company affiliated with developer Richard Weintraub. REW bought the 10-plus-acre parcel in 2003 for $17.6 million when it housed a 154,000-square-foot industrial building occupied by movie-camera maker Panavision. The manufacturing company moved in 2012, according to real estate data provider CoStar Group Inc., and Weintraub split the land into two pieces. He sold the larger parcel, at a little over six acres, to Houston developer Dinerstein Cos. for $31.8 million in 2012. Dinerstein demolished the industrial building that dated to 1974 and built the 395-unit Millennium Woodland Hills apartment complex on its part of the site. Earlier this year, Evenhaim presented preliminary plans for his project to the Woodland Hills-Warner Center Neighborhood Council and got a thumbs up from the group, which recommended approval. Green Light? One of the Valley’s most ambitious real estate projects, the proposed headquarters campus of toymaker MGA Entertainment Inc., is sailing through the city’s entitlement process despite its enormous size and complexity. The 1.2 million-square-foot project, at the former Los Angeles Times printing plant at 20000 W. Prairie St. in Chatsworth, will combine 250,000 square feet of office space, 10,000 square feet of retail and 660 multifamily units with extensive public amenities like a jogging track and amphitheater. It will incorporate adaptive reuse of the existing printing building into a light industrial-creative office headquarters for the toymaker. Plans for the 24-acre site were unanimously approved in July by the city of L.A.’s Planning Commission. The City Council is expected to vote on the project in the next month or so, said Mark Armbruster, a land-use attorney with Armbruster & Goldsmith & Delvac of West Los Angeles, who represents MGA in the development. “The project has been just incredibly well-received. The neighborhood council, (Mitchell Englander’s) City Council office and the mayor have all expressed support and nobody has spoken up in opposition,” Armbruster said. NoHo GoGo Add another player to what seems like a cast of thousands vying to build in the NoHo Arts District: the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The agency owns four land parcels totaling more than 15 acres around the bustling North Hollywood Red Line station on Lankershim Boulevard. After an earlier attempt to develop the land was quashed by the economic downturn, Metro is going back to the drawing board, vetting developers who might build residential and mixed-use projects on the land, which is zoned for high density. The agency will seek public input on development at two meetings, Sept. 24 and Oct. 13, both in North Hollywood. Staff reporter Karen E. Klein can be reached at (818) 316-3123 or at [email protected].

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