Mike Barry Gets Nod for Seven-Story Koreatown Hotel

Koreatown landlord Mike Barry has gotten a green light to build a six-story hotel, with an extra seventh floor featuring apartments on top, a reversal from a previous plan to go all-in on the lodging aspect.

Owner Mike Barry was approved by the Los Angeles City Council to construct the seven-story building, including a 60-room hotel with apartments above at 3216-3222 West Eighth Street and 800-814 ½ Mariposa Avenue, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.

It will replace a four-unit apartment complex and parking lot.

Barry’s initial plans were filed in 2018 and called for a hotel and residential project. But in 2022, he revised his plans to feature a six-story, 95-room hotel. He then went back to his original plan with both lodging and housing.

After reviving the plans last year for the hotel-apartment project at Eighth and Mariposa, the goal was to complete the hotel and apartments by 2026. Construction is expected to take 24 months.

The plans now entail 4,000 square feet of shops and restaurants on the ground floor of a seven-story building, with a 60-room hotel and 20 apartments above. A three-level underground parking garage would serve 71 cars.

The U-shaped project, designed by locally based EWAI, would include separate hotel and residential wings, with swimming pools at the second floor and rooftop. The hotel would include a 1,400-square-foot rooftop bar.

The proposed hotel and apartment building has mostly floor-to-ceiling windows, and is trimmed in white, gray and slate blue, according to a rendering.

Barry also owns the H Hotel at 3206 West 8th Street in Koreatown, next to the proposed 60-room hotel and apartments.

In 2023, an investigative report by ProPublica found Barry and other Los Angeles hotel owners controversially turned residential hotels for low-income residents into boutique hotels for tourists, charging more than $200 a night. A hotel manager said the hotel hadn’t accepted long-term residents since 2019, and asked the city to remove its residential designation.

— Dana Bartholomew