Owner of Toyota of Hollywood Moves Ahead on Retail Village

The Sullivan family has moved forward with plans to knock down the nation’s oldest Toyota dealership in Hollywood and replace it with a 501,500-square-foot retail village.

The owner of Hawthorne-based LAcarGuy is backed by a new environmental study for its plan to replace the 67-year-old Toyota of Hollywood at 6000 West Hollywood Boulevard, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.

Plans call for replacing the 3.7-acre car lot on Hollywood Boulevard between Bronson Street and Gower Avenue with a 35-story, 350-unit apartment tower with 22,500 square feet of ground-floor retail.

The project would also include 11 townhomes and a six-story, 136,000-square-foot office building.

The village would include shops and restaurants on two levels connected to outdoor dining areas and public plazas.

Of the development’s 350 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments, 44 units would be set aside as affordable for very low-income households in exchange for a density bonus allowing a larger building than permitted by zoning rules.

The mixed-use village, designed by Culver City-based OfficeUntitled, would be clad in mostly floor-to-ceiling glass for its apartments and offices, interspersed with gray townhomes, according to a rendering.

The village is broken up by 23,500 square feet of publicly accessible open space, including a plaza fronting Hollywood Boulevard. Plans also call for a pool deck, a view deck, fitness areas and game rooms.

In 2022, the project applicant was 6000 Hollywood Boulevard Associates LLC, which lists the Downtown Los Angeles offices of Houston-based Hines as its business address, according to Bisnow. It’s not clear if Hines is still involved with the project.

Pending approvals, a developer could break ground as early as 2026 and complete the village by 2029.

Toyota of Hollywood, founded in 1957, is a subsidiary of Hawthorne-based LAcarGuy, which has 13 Los Angeles County dealers, owned by the Sullivan family.

“From day one, my family and I set out to reimagine our property into a vibrant mixed-use destination that adds to the vitality of this community through new housing, community-serving retail and commercial office,” Mike Sullivan, CEO of LAcarGuy, said in a statement. “It is incredibly exciting to have reached this milestone in the review process.”

Toyota of Hollywood, located at the site of the original headquarters of Toyota Motor Sales USA, opened in October 1957 on the site of a former Ford dealer managed by Mike Sullivan’s father, Wilfred Sullivan, according to the Beverly Press.

Its first cars were two Toyota Toyopet sedans shipped over from Japan to test whether consumers would be interested in the vehicles. By 1958, what is now the world’s biggest automaker had set up 45 dealerships, selling 288 Toyotas in the U.S.

In 2016, Toyota relocated its North American headquarters from Torrance to Texas, taking thousands of jobs from Southern California.

— Dana Bartholomew