Jamison Project to Replace Former Crenshaw Women’s Center

Jamison Properties’ latest development project is a six-story Transit Oriented Communities apartment building in Central L.A.’s Mid-Wilshire neighborhood.

The Koreatown-based firm — which in recent years has emerged among the West Coast’s busiest multifamily developers — filed the application on June 29 for a new project at 1025-1037 South Crenshaw Boulevard, near that street’s intersection with Olympic Boulevard. The site is located near the western edge of Koreatown, an area that has garnered a lot of interest from developers as residential demand continues to grow in densely populated Ktown.

It’s also the location of the former Crenshaw Women’s Center, the first such center in Los Angeles. In the early 1970s, in the words of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the clinic “was the brick-and-mortar heart of the second-wave feminist movement in Los Angeles”; a few years ago the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission nominated the nondescript building as a historic cultural monument, which would have saved it from demolition.

But in early 2022 the L.A. City Council voted to alter the monument distinction to a commemoration, which removed the building itself from demolition protections. The Los Angeles Conservancy opposed that change.

By then the women’s center had long ago stopped operating. For years the building was home to a car and truck rental business, which has now closed. Property records show that Jamison’s entity picked up the property in a multi-parcel deal last November, two and a half years after a previous developer defaulted on a loan. It was unclear how much Jamison paid.

The apartment project would include 97 total units, with 40 studios and 57 one-bedroom apartments. Ten of those units would be designated for extremely low-income tenants, in line with requirements of L.A.’s Transit Oriented Communities program, which affords developers certain density and other bonuses for projects located near public transit.

The new development adds to a busy spring and summer for Jamison. Just in the past few weeks, the company has filed at least three office-to-residential conversion proposals, including a plan to transform the 33-story former ARCO office tower in Downtown L.A. into a complex with nearly 700 apartments. It also sold one office building, in NoHo, and listed the historic Westlake Theatre building near MacArthur Park for sale.