Boyle Heights WELCOME HOME

The City of Los Angeles intends to sell a former Community Redevelopment Agency property in Boyle Heights to a private firm that would develop a project featuring some combination of affordable housing and retail space. The development site, located at 110 S. Boyle Avenue, is an approximately 14,000-square-foot lot located across the street from Mariachi Plaza and the Boyle Hotel. Various redevelopment and community plans in recent years have designated the lot as an opportunity site for public parking, low income housing and commercial space.

The live cameras may be down for the count, but aerial images from architectural photographer Hunter Kerhart showcase progress on the Sixth Street Viaduct replacement. Crews are currently in the process of demolishing the 3,500-foot long bridge, which was compromised by an alkali-silica reaction. Past studies indicated that the condition put the 1932 structure at a high risk of collapse during a major seismic event. One of the bridge’s iconic metal arches was removed earlier this month, and will eventually be incorporated into a park that is planned beneath the viaduct.

Earlier this year, architecture firm Omgivning granted us a look inside the historic Sears, Roebuck & Company Mail Order Building in Boyle Heights. The 1.8-million-square-foot complex, built in 1927, is a well known landmark to freeway commuters, with a 226-foot-tall Art Deco tower that dominates the Eastside skyline. Mostly vacant since the early 1990s, it has been subject to numerous attempts at redevelopment in the decades since. Developer Izek Shomof, who purchased the building in 2013, has announced plans to convert the historic landmark and its surrounding property into a multi-use development featuring office space, apartments and pedestrian-oriented shops and restaurants.

Plans for a new low-income housing complex in Boyle Heights took a step forward last week, when the East Los Angeles Community Corporation (ELACC) began the process of relocating a 121-year-old home near the the Gold Line’s Soto Station. The Peabody Werden House, built in 1895, will move to a vacant lot across the street on June 30, where it will be restored and reactivated for the surrounding community. In its place, ELACC intends to construct the Cielito Lindo Apartments, a $23-million development which would include 50 one-, two- and three-bedroom dwellings and 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

Are you a low income individual who has always wanted to live next to a giant cemetery? If so, A Community of Friends has a project in the works that will be right up your alley. Lorena Plaza is a 49-unit affordable housing development, pegged to replace a vacant, Metro-owned parcel at the northeast corner of 1st and Lorena Streets. The five-story edifice would rise across from the 136 year old Evergreen Cemetary, which contains over 300,000 headstones and a lot of not-evergreen grass.

Back in January, news of a supportive housing project adjacent to the Gold Line’s Indiana Station was met with hostility from Boyle Heights residents. Hopefully a proposed transit oriented development next to Soto Station will get a warmer response. According to a recent case filing with LADCP, plans are in the works for a 64,000 square foot mixed-use structure near the intersection of 1st and Soto Streets. Rising six stories, the project would consist of 50 residential units, 3,400 square feet of street level commercial space, and 8,500 square feet of office space on its top floor.

In order to meet Federal ADA standards, Metro has started the process of implementing larger fonts into their next train monitors. The new format is much easier to read for those with vision impairments, and feature a countdown as opposed to listing the time for the next scheduled train.

Five years after the Gold Line’s Eastside branch opened, development is finally headed to one of the Metro-owned properties above Mariachi Plaza Station. According to plans submitted to the city in late October, an mixed-use affordable housing project will be constructed on the vacant 1.5-acre lot at 1750 E. 1st Street. The proposed residential complex, dubbed the Santa Cecilia Apartments, is being developed by a partnership between Metro and McCormack Baron Salazar.

Yesterday brought the pleasant surprise of a new mixed-use development catacorner to the Gold Line’s Mariachi Plaza Station. Looks like that was just the tip of an oncoming TOD iceberg. According to the agenda of the November 5th meeting of Metro’s Planning & Programming Committee, the agency is planning new mixed-use developments on four additional properties in Boyle Heights. This decision follows an 11-month selection process, in which Metro staff evaluated multiple proposals for each site on the basis of 1) their overall development program, 2) project feasibility, 3) the experience and qualifications of the development team and 4) a financial proposal to the agency.

Renderings have emerged a $22 million mixed-use development which would create affordable housing, stores and restaurants across the street from the Gold Line’s Soto Station. The project, dubbed Cielito Lindo, would rise upon an approximately half-acre site at 2407-2419 East 1st Street, replacing a series of Craftsman and Victorian-style structures. Plans filed with the City of Los Angeles call for a six-story building, featuring 50 residential units, 5,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, and an 8,500-square-foot penthouse to house the offices of its developer, the East LA Community Corporation (ELACC).