Millennium Plans Retail-to-Resi Tower Conversion on Wilshire

The same New York-based developer that walked away from a massive mixed-used project next to Hollywood’s famous Capital Records building without comment last year has set its sights on a prime corner of Beverly Hills for a residential high-rise.

Millennium Partners is seeking a go-ahead on a redevelopment plan that would see a single-story retail building at 8300 Wilshire Boulevard supplanted by a 34-story apartment tower with about 10 percent of its 250 or so units set aside as affordable, Commercial Observer reported.

Mario Palumbo Jr., managing partner of Millennium Partners’ Los Angeles unit, touted the plan as help for Beverly Hills in meeting state-mandated levels of new housing — although the city has recently gotten in line with the requirements.

“We are putting high-rise housing where it belongs, and more critically, adding to the city’s housing stock without any loss of existing units,” Palumbo told Commercial Observer. “That is especially important given the pressure on the City of Beverly Hills to produce more housing units amid scrutiny from state officials that it demonstrate its intention to do so.”

Palumbo’s somewhat tardy perspective might be even more so considering recent signals of movement by various builders remedy projects that developers have lined up.

Builders remedy is a method of forcing the hand of municipalities that are reluctant to add certain levels of housing. The concept — which has been challenged in various cases — allows housing developers to skirt local zoning in cities such as Beverly Hills that failed to certify their state-mandated housing plans, provided the proposed projects include at least 20 percent affordable units.

Beverly Hills got an approval from the state on its plans last year, and more recently it said it would remove its objections to several builders remedy projects if the developers would cut heights.

The site Millennium Partners is eyeing is at Wilshire and one leg of San Vicente Boulevard, near the future Metro station. The developer is seeking to use the state Density Bonus Law.

The area currently is zoned for low-density commercial use.

Millennium Partners quit on plans for a larger project in Hollywood, withdrawing its application with the City of Los Angeles for the so-called “Hollywood Center” project of two residential towers with a total of 1,000 units and nearly 400,000 square feet of office space Capitol Records building on Vine Street north of Hollywood Boulevard.

— Jerry Sullivan