Los Angeles-based real estate developer Leo Lee is pitching a third proposal for a new apartment complex at a site in Koreatown that he has been trying to redevelop since before the pandemic.
The developer recently filed an application to the Los Angeles Department of City Planning for a new 8-story mixed-use building with 219 market-rate units at 3800 West 6th Street. According to a report in Urbanize LA, the proposal comes five years after he pitched a mixed-use residential building on the same property, and six years after Lee proposed a high-rise on the same premises.
Lee’s application for two incentives was approved on June 26.
Documents filed to the department show that the entire building will span a combined 183,824 square feet. The report in Urbanize LA says the proposal calls for 8,748 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and a 173-car basement parking garage. The proposal calls for 53 studios, 144 one-bedrooms and 22 two-bedroom units.
To the south of the 8-story building, the developer would add a pool and courtyard on the second level.
The proposal calls for two driveways off South Serrano Avenue and South Hobart Boulevard. There will be 211 bicycle parking spaces at both street level and in enclosed bicycle storage rooms within the basement levels of the project.
A second building at 611 South Hobart Boulevard, recently completed by Lee, consists of 80 affordable senior housing units. That project would grant a density bonus for the mixed-use building.
A second report in Urbanize LA about the affordable building says Lee secured a density bonus for that project. The developer asked the department to count the 80 affordable units it already completed as part of the required affordable housing set-aside to qualify for a density bonus for the second building.
The approval from the Los Angeles Department of City Planning comes five years after Lee pitched a proposal for 301 apartments and retail at the same site. That project, according to a report in Urbanize LA, would have included 6,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, restaurant space and parking for up to 160 vehicles.
But even that proposal is dwarfed by Lee’s proposal from 2019, when he proposed a 21-story tower that included a 192-room Hyatt Centric hotel and condominiums. However, that proposal was abandoned when officials voted not to approve a tax incentive in 2020.
