Thrive expects 15% savings with modular apartments in Chinatown

Thrive Living is building a prefabricated apartment building in Chinatown, where it expects the prefab method will cut 15 percent from the construction budget.

Thrive, a Los Angeles-based unit of Magnum Real Estate Group of New York, is now using cranes to stack its modular units at 1457 North Main Street, south of L.A. State Historic Park, Urbanize Los Angeles reported. It replaced a food processing plant.

Plans for the six-story complex, dubbed Main Street Apartments, call for 376 studio and one-bedroom units atop 6,500 square feet of ground-floor shops and restaurants, with parking for 89 cars.

Thrive was approved to set aside 42 apartments as affordable for extremely low-income tenants.

The developer announced it intends to rent the remaining 334 market-rate units to moderate-income renters earning up to 80 percent of the area median income, which may include teachers and nurses.

The landlord will also accept applicants with Housing Choice Vouchers.

The green, white and gray project, designed by Orange-based AO, will be a plain building, with no balconies. It will include a rooftop deck, gym, recreation room, business center and street-level courtyards.

The use of modular construction is expected to cut overall costs by 15 percent, according to the firm. Completion is expected next year.

Thrive made headlines this fall when it broke ground in Baldwin Hills on the first Costco Wholesale store in the nation to be topped by apartments. The site will include a ground-level big-box store topped by 800 apartments at 5035 West Coliseum Street.

The six-story project, designed by AO, development will also employ prefab construction.

In June last year, Magnum Real Estate bought the Baldwin Hills Shopping Center across the street at 5060 Obama Boulevard for $37.3 million, as reported by The Real Deal. The 104,000-square-foot property is anchored by a Ralphs supermarket.

Thrive Living, founded in 2021 by Ben Shaoul, specializes in workforce housing and is poised to spend $1 billion on projects nationwide, according to its website.

Unlike other affordable housing developers, Thrive privately finances its projects without the use of government subsidies such as low-income housing tax credits.

Thrive’s Chinatown project is among a handful of new developments reshaping the industrial blocks east of L.A. State Historic Park, according to Urbanize. They include a 280-unit apartment complex now under construction at 200 North Mesnager Street and a 445-unit complex proposed one block north facing Spring Street.

— Dana Bartholomew