Orange Colors the Valley With Projects

Geographical outlier studio Architects Orange has become a prolific player in an unlikely place: Warner Center. In addition to the 335-unit, freeway-adjacent luxury apartments they designed for the joint venture partnership of Amcal Equities, a division of Amcal Multi-Housing Inc. in Agoura Hills, and Santa Monica’s Gortikov Enterprises Inc., at 22055 to 22121 Clarendon St., the Orange County architecture firm has kept busy with other projects in Woodland Hills, among them renovations to the Marriott Warner Center at 21850 W. Oxnard St. and the mixed-use Triana at Warner Center at 6250 Canoga Ave. The firm also crafted multifamily units at the old Thermo Fisher Scientific research and development site at Kittredge and Independence streets, which will be submitted for plan check in two months. That project should break ground early next year. In terms of residential developments, Architects Orange designed Eton at Warner Center at 6701 Eton Ave.; Carillon at 6301 De Soto Ave.; Oceano Warner Center Apartments at 6355 De Soto Ave.; and Vela on Ox on Oxnard Street near Canoga Avenue. Surprisingly, the Clarendon was not the most complicated project in Warner Center for the Orange-based architects, according to project managers R.C. Alley, Ed Cadavona and Michael Heinrich. Alley and Heinrich told the Business Journal that Vela on Ox, a 379-unit luxury apartment complex with rooftop deck, pool and multiple courtyards at 21221 Oxnard St., was more difficult because of the incoming Warner Center 2035 Specific Plan, Councilman Bob Blumenfield’s move toward commercial and residential development to turn Woodland Hills into the downtown of San Fernando Valley. “We were the first project to be done after the specific plan is approved,” Heinrich said of the $70-million Fairfield Residential development. The Clarendon aside, Architects Orange has 10 projects in various stages of development in the Valley, according to Alley. The firm crafted the 724-unit multifamily component of the mixed-use NoHo West in North Hollywood between Erwin and Oxnard streets, which will also deliver 190,000 square feet of commercial space, 2,600 parking spaces, and a four-story, 500,000-square-foot office building to replace the former Macy’s department store. That project breaks ground in four months.