Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Big Arts District Warehouse Becoming Office Space


The Arts District continues to shed its industrial past, as yet another adaptive reuse project joins an already considerable list of proposed developments.  According to an October case filing with the Department of City Planning, a 280,000-square-foot warehouse complex at 2060 E. 7th Street is slated for a mixed-use conversion.  Plans filed with the city call for 40,000 square feet of retail and 20,000 square feet of restaurant uses within the development.  Upper floors of four-story complex feature rectangular floor plates, each of which can be combined to offer 88,000 square feet of contiguous office space.

The project is being developed by the Shorenstein Company, a San Francisco-based real estate firm which recently purchased the towering Aon Center.  The above warehouse, dubbed Seventh & Santa Fe, originally opened in 1915 as the Ford Motor Company's Southern California base of operations (Thank you, John Crandell!).  Designed by famed Los Angeles architect John Parkinson, the facility was used primarily for the assembly of Model T's and Model A's.

Seventh & Santa Fe is located in the southernmost section of the Arts District, an area which has recently experienced a noticeable uptick in investment.  Two additional mixed-use developments are planned nearby along 7th Street, potentially creating over 400 new market rate housing units.  Retailers and eateries have also taken notice of the neighborhood, including Bestia and Stumptown Coffee Roasters, both of which are located across Santa Fe Avenue from the proposed office project.


5 comments:

  1. Santa Fe will soon be the spine of the largest concentration of art galleries Los Angeles has ever seen. Galleries - both announced and unannounced - are signing leases on or just off Santa Fe all the way from Little Tokyo down to Washington Boulevard.

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    1. That's certainly one way to keep the Arts in the Arts District. Glad to hear.

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  2. This building was constructed approximately in the year 1915, designed by John Parkinson for Henry Ford. It was the first automobile manufacturing plant on the west coast.

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    1. What a brain fart! I can't believe I missed that. Appreciate the heads up; I've amended the post to reflect this information, with credit to you.

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  3. The sculpture studio L.A. Meltdown was the very first gallery on Seventh, operated for a decade following the '84 Olympics.

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