Tishman Speyer is planning to build 620 apartments on land in Santa Monica it recently purchased for $150 million from Neil Shekhter’s WSC Communities.
The New York-based commercial giant is planning to build eight properties across 3.1 acres in Downtown Santa Monica, according to an announcement on Monday. The Real Deal reported when the deal went into hard contract last month, but details were previously unknown.
The announcement indicates that around 19 percent of the units — or 116 — will be classified as affordable.
Tishman Speyer will also build 31,000 square feet of retail space across the properties.
WSC – controlled by Shekhter, his sons and CEO Scott Walter – had put 23 parcels on the market in January. The combined chunk of land was entitled for the development of over 2,100 units and over 1 million square feet of residential amid the notoriously tight multifamily market of Santa Monica, an oceanfront city known for its challenging entitlement process.
“Never has there been an opportunity to acquire a development portfolio of this size in Southern California, never mind Santa Monica,” the marketing materials for the portfolio stated.
WSC took its remaining 15 parcels off the market after the sale to Tishman Speyer. All eight of the parcels the developer acquired came with entitlements to build rental units, and construction if expected to start by late 2022. The complexes are set to be finished by 2024.
The units will be built across: 1318 Lincoln Boulevard, 1430 Lincoln Boulevard, 1650 Lincoln Boulevard, 501 Broadway, 711 Colorado Avenue, 1313 6th Street, 1323 5th Street and 1338 5th Street.
The project marks Tishman Speyer’s first foray into Los Angeles’ residential market. The firm owns around 2 million square feet of office space across the region, including a 147,000-square-foot office at 2120 Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica.
In Santa Monica, the project will allow the firm “to develop a critical mass of new housing in a market where demand is acute,” Tishman Speyer’s Rob Speyer said in a statement.