Steven Sharp WELCOME HOME

Back on the Westside, construction is moving quickly on Lincoln Property Group’s Runway development on Jefferson Boulevard. The $200 million development broke ground in April, and is intended to provide a town center for the massive Playa Vista campus. When completed in 2014, Runway will provide 420 residential units, 35,000 square feet of office space, and 221,000 square feet of retail space, served by a 1,400 car garage. Announced tenants include CVS Pharmacy, Veggie Grill and Whole Foods Market.

Down on the far western end of Culver Boulevard, developer Cove Spring Partners is in the midst of construction on an office development known as “The Strand Offices at Playa Del Rey.“ The project creates 10,000 square feet of creative office space, divided between two three-story buildings with architecture from the MIKA Design Group. The Strand will include large windows and outdoor decks to provide sweeping views of the Ballona Wetlands and Marina Del Rey.

Koreatown has seen a boom in residential construction during the past calendar year, and that trend looks to continue on a parking lot just north of Wilshire Boulevard. Jamison Services Incorporated, one of Koreatown’s largest commercial landlords, has plans to build an 84-unit apartment building next to the Wilshire Professional Building. The project at 626 St. Andrews Place will stand six-stories, with design work from Corbel Architects. Despite the nearby Wilshire/Western subway station, 626 St.

Back in July, the Los Angeles Times announced that Downtown’s long awaited Federal Courthouse had finally broken ground. The 10-story edifice, designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), will rise from the corner of 1st and Broadway. SOM and Clark Construction want to make sure that everyone can see the $400 million project under construction, so they installed a webcam across the street. There’s not much to see yet, but the lot will eventually be home to 24 courtrooms and 32 judge’s chambers.

Just west of J.H. Snyder’s Vermont Towers and their massive parking podium, Century West Partners are well into the construction process on the first building of their K2LA development. The project replaces three surface parking lots on a site bounded by Berendo Street, New Hampshire Avenue and 7th Street. When completed, K2LA will add 476-apartments just a short walk from the busy Wilshire/Vermont subway station. The project also includes two additional seven-story buildings that do not appear to have broken ground yet.

In late September, UCLA broke ground on a $120 million expansion of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the corner of Le Conte and Tiverton. The Teaching and Learning Center for Health Sciences, which the administration gleefully refers to as TLC, will stand six-stories and span 110,000 square feet. The project was paid for using a combination of cash reserves and philanthropic donations. TLC will allow UCLA to consolidate a significant portion of the medical school’s classroom space, which is currently spread between 11 different buildings.

When IDS Realty put the long stalled Metropolis development on the market earlier this year, they commissioned a series of renderings showing the approximate size and scope of the project’s full build out. The 6.3 acre site is entitled for a total of 1.65 million square feet of hotel, residential, office and retail uses divided between five towers. The completed development would include roughly 400,000 square feet of office space and up to 1,676 hotel rooms.

Back in Marina Del Rey, developer Trical Construction is nearing completion on a 77-unit apartment complex located at 4108 Del Rey Avenue. The five-story development, designed by Keith Dover Associates, is known as Tribeca Urban, a somewhat ironic name given the project’s deliberate isolation from the street. Tribeca Urban will consist of 1-3 bedroom apartments and provide “resort-style amenities,” including a fitness center, an outdoor fireplace, and a spa. The building is scheduled to open late this year.

CityGro.ws creator Stephen Corwin recently got his hands on new renderings of the planned adaptive re-use of the former Desmond’s department store warehouse in South Park. The Los Angeles Times reports that the five-story structure was purchased by the Lincoln Property Company earlier this year, with the intention of converting the building into a mixed-use development containing creative offices, ground level commercial space and a roof top bar. The long vacant building dates back to 1916, when it started its life as full-service dealership for the Willys-Overland Motor Company.

Remember when the Downtown News reported that Izek Shomof wanted to build a 22-story, 400 unit residential tower at the southeastern corner of 4th and Broadway? Turns out that the veteran Historic Core developer is a bit more ambitious than that. Plans were submitted to the Department of City Planning earlier this month for the construction of a new 34-story mixed-use tower over a subterranean parking garage at 400 S Broadway.