DTLA Highrise Apartment Project Hits Market

One of Downtown L.A.’s largest development projects has hit the market.

Realm Group, a joint venture between Newport Beach-based developer and investor Realm and the Bascom Group, an Irvine-based private equity firm, has listed the Bixel Tower, a 36-story highrise project at 675 South Bixel Street, on the westside of downtown near Wilshire Boulevard.

The site is already entitled for 422 residential units and 4,900 square feet of commercial space.

The listing, from JLL, states the project is “slated to be one of the tallest for-rent residential buildings in Downtown” and emphasizes future tenants’ “breathtaking views of the Los Angeles basin and the DTLA skyline.”

The price for the site is undisclosed. The joint venture closed on its purchase and entitled the site in 2018, according to a 2019 press release, and originally planned to start construction in 2020.

At the time, Downtown L.A. was in the middle of a residential building surge that ranked among the most notable in the country, as tens of thousands of new units opened and thousands more were in the pipeline.

The pandemic then hit the neighborhood particularly hard, leading to many stalled projects, although the city is still counting on the area as a major center for new residential growth — even as it now confronts a dire crisis of office vacancy. A new Downtown L.A. zoning update, which the L.A. City Council approved in May, plans for 100,000 new units over the next 20 years, amounting to the most ambitious residential growth plan in the city.