Meta Housing to Turn Former North Hills Nursery into Apartments

A 4.35-acre North Hills site formally hosting Green Arrow Nursery at 8845 Sepulveda Blvd. has changed hands for $14 million after a long dormancy. In a deal sealed Aug. 17, Meta Housing – one of Los Angeles’ leading developers of affordable housing – bought the vacant parcel of land. The sale has a complicated history. A partnership of Los Angeles brokerage firm Evanisko Realty & Investment Inc. and Systems Real Estate Management Inc. listed the property in June 2015, when Evanisko and Systems brokered an acquisition structure on behalf of the sellers with a market-rate developer who successfully garnered zone changes and entitlements to build 364 apartment units with 557 parking stalls in place of the then-operational nursery business. Contingencies were removed and entitlements were awarded by mid-2017. However, rising costs and increased concerns over the long-term trajectory of the location led to the cancellation of escrow in December 2018. Evanisko and his clients were left holding millions of dollars in released deposits and an entitled piece of dirt since operations at the nursery had been shut down and the structure was demolished in anticipation of the project. “In contemplating a market re-entry of the site, I began to wonder if in fact the density play was the right maneuver,” Evanisko told the Business Journal. “If we could do this all over again, we would have likely proposed that we entitle on behalf of our client for a form of attainable for-sale housing product (i.e., townhouses) prior to sale, but back in 2015 costs hadn’t yet gotten out of control and the density seemed enticing to the market.” Meta Housing plans to move forward with the entitled apartment project. “I know when Meta calls, they’ve done their homework,” Evanisko said. “This is the fourth deal we’ve closed with Meta in the last 13 years.”