FAQ

West LA Commons will be a vibrant, mixed-use project featuring equitable housing opportunities for a mix of household incomes, dynamic and engaging commercial spaces, new and revitalized municipal uses, ample publicly accessible open space, and robust, inclusive community programming. Check out the site plan for proposed uses.

West LA Commons will revitalize the existing West Los Angeles Civic Center, an underutilized, eight-acre site bounded by Santa Monica Boulevard and Corinth, Iowa, and Butler Avenues just west of the I-405 freeway.

The developer team was selected to revitalize and redevelop the West LA Civic Center site after responding to a competitive Request for Proposals jointly issued in May 2020 by Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles. The rigorous selection process included a qualifications and proposal response, several interviews, and a community presentation that contemplated each applicant’s conceptual design, financing feasibility, development program, and community engagement plan, among more.

The parameters set forth in the RFP highlight housing as the primary priority and even included a minimum level of affordable housing that must be included in the project. Both the City of Los Angeles and LA County both recently adopted Housing Elements that include policies to help boost housing construction, reduce homelessness, and protect tenants at risk of displacement. For example, the City must identify properties that could be developed for 455,000 new units of housing, including nearly 185,000 units for lower-income residents. That’s five times the number of new homes  the City had to plan for during the last Housing Element period from 2012 to 2019. Learn more about the City’s housing element here. Learn more about Los Angeles County’s Housing Element here.

The project proposes a total of 926 residential units, including nearly 500 market-rate apartments and more than 430 service-enhanced affordable units. The affordable housing will serve families, seniors, and people experiencing homelessness. The total number of affordable housing units vastly exceeds the 30% affordable requirement sought for in the Request for Proposals.

Affordable rents will be governed by State of California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (TCAC) which utilizes information published by the United States Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) to calculate rent and income limits for projects financed with Low Income Housing Tax Credits. The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) also publishes the median rent and income limits for housing development projects that utilize the State Density Bonus Law. This information is updated annually. Rents for the affordable units at West LA Commons will be based on this published information and will span a range based on household size and income levels.

More than 40,000 square feet of neighborhood-serving retail and restaurants will be included in the project. The commercial programming will extend Santa Monica Boulevard’s pedestrian corridor and link the site’s core community uses to the neighborhood. By doing so, West LA Commons will emerge as the area’s transformed heart, connecting those who live, work, and play in the area to each other and the neighborhoods of West Los Angeles. Commercial tenants will be announced as agreements are formalized.

As a part of the draft environmental impact report, a historic report will assess the site history and its potential historic significance while also confirming previous evaluations of the existing buildings, most notably the Courthouse and Municipal Buildings. In addition, further analysis of the proposed project will be conducted in order to identify potential impacts (direct/indirect/cumulative) to historic resources. As the project progresses further into the EIR process, the development team will be submitting design/program alternatives for the project that will propose to address the significant impacts that are identified.

There is approximately 129,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space proposed for West LA Commons.

West LA Commons is proposing approximately 190,000 square feet of open space in total. Of that approximately 129,000 square feet will be publicly accessible, including the public plaza, which would be a large flexible area at the center of the project for community gatherings, movie nights, concerts, yoga, street fairs, arts programming, and the like, and nearly 9,000 square feet of turf space for kids to play and families to gather.

The Plaza and Bandstand will provide flex-use space for gatherings such as movie nights, concerts, outdoor yoga, farmers’ markets, street fairs, arts programming, and the like. Significant local investment to bring public art to the project site will further create an integrated system of outdoor circulation.

We anticipate that a West LA Commons master association will be formed to oversee the general operations of the publicly-accessible areas of the project. This will include the coordination and oversight for the maintenance of the public open spaces. Members of the master association would include the City of Los Angeles, LA County, AvalonBay Communities, and Abode Communities.

West LA Commons will be working closely with our world-renowned design architectural firm OLIN, as well as seeking input from the community, on how best to incorporate landscaping into the design. Learm more about OLIN here.

Creating a new public park is not a priority for the City and County at this location. Additionally, it would require a complete redesign of the project that would result in a significant loss in the number of housing units, including affordable housing, which is the established priority for the project as outlined in the RFP. Having said that, we have significantly increased the amount of public green space from what was originally proposed, offering many of the same opportunities found in a public park, including turf space for play and a wide variety of seating options.

West LA Commons features thoughtfully planned building density and circulation that invites pedestrian engagement, promotes visual and physical connectivity to the neighborhood at-large, and improves neighborhood walkability.

Buildings at West LA Commons will range in height from two to eight stories. The plans for West LA Commons have already been refined to reflect community feedback by scaling back the originally proposed 23-story tower to no higher than eight stories.

The originally proposed project included a 23-story residential tower. Based on the feedback we received from the City, County, and members of the community who participated in the public presentation last fall, we decided to revise our project so that it fit in better with the surrounding uses. So we redesigned the project to lower the height of the buildings, and we did this without significantly reducing the number of housing units, including affordable housing, and amount of public open space, both of which we felt were important to provide at the levels originally proposed.

• Rooftop amenities will be provided in select buildings and will be designed to help minimize any noise and privacy impacts on our neighbors. In addition, rules will be established to govern the hours of operation.

The project is underway with an 18-month environmental review process. This process is followed by several opportunities for the public to provide input regarding the environmental impacts of the project. A final Environmental Impact Report is anticipated to be certified by the County in Fall 2023, followed by City Council approval in winter 2023. For more information about the EIR Scoping Session and process, please see Updates or Subscribe to the newsletter.

Yes, the development team is committed to engaging the community and other key stakeholders to deliver a responsive development program that meets neighborhood needs. Opportunities for engagement will include town hall meetings, community presentations, design charrettes, and more. All engagement opportunities will be widely communicated to the public at the appropriate time. Please subscribe here to receive project updates.

Yes, an Environmental Impact Report will be conducted to thoroughly analyze the environmental effects of the proposed project, identify possible ways to minimize those effects, and describe reasonable alternatives to the primary proposed design plan. The public will have an opportunity to provide input on the Draft Environmental Impact Report.

Yes. All traffic impacts and potential mitigations will be thoroughly studied as a part of the project’s Environmental Impact Report.

Yes, the project will conform to code requirements by providing ample subterranean parking for residents and visitors alike.

A car-sharing program will be evaluated as part of the Transportation Demand Management plan that will be implemented for the West LA Commons project. We believe there will also be opportunities to implement a shared parking arrangement during non-work hours for the parking stalls allocated to the municipal building uses. Coordination of that arrangement will need to be discussed further with our partners at the City and County and as part of the project’s environmental review.

Absolutely. The project will include bike parking and associated repair space for residents at each residential building, and there will also be plenty of bike parking for tenants, employees, and visitors available at different locations throughout the property. We are also contemplating incorporating a bike valet for special public events and will continue to explore this as we further develop the design and programming.

The Library is not a part of the West LA Commons project and will remain in operation as is. That said, the current parking for the library is proposed to be replaced with an increased number of stalls to meet current City code, all of which will be provided in the subterranean parking structure at West LA Commons. In addition, the West LA Commons team is proposing to install upgraded landscaping adjacent to the library that we will coordinate with our City partners on.

The LAPD West LA Division station and related facilities are not included in the project scope and will remain in place.

West LA Commons is working closely with the operators of the West LA Farmers’ Market, and the plan is to enhance and expand the market as part of the site’s redevelopment. As part of the project, the market will remain located along the proposed Purdue Promenade in the same linear format offering more space and improved orientation for local patrons.

West LA Commons, as a master planned community, is anticipated to achieve a LEED for Neighborhood Development rating, while individual residential and mixed-use buildings are expected to achieve LEED Gold ratings at a minimum.

It is currently estimated that more than 1,000 construction jobs will be created to see West LA Commons to fruition. This information will be updated, including construction and permanent jobs, upon the completion of a fiscal impact report.

The team is working closely with leading skateboard advocates, including Tony Hawk’s non-profit, The Skatepark Project, to figure out ways to best honor the rich street skating history at the civic center property. We recognize this is an important piece of the property’s history and tradition, and we want to respect that and find ways to safely incorporate it into the project.

Community input means a great deal to the West LA Commons development team, which is why we have been engaging with so many local stakeholder groups and individual neighbors since the very beginning of the process. Most notably as it relates to public open space design, one of our highest priorities is responding to the community’s desires for specific programming that is welcoming and promotes positive, safe, and fun activities for the surrounding neighborhood. Please send an email to us with your thoughts at .

Click here or scroll down to the form in the Contact section below.