This post was updated Oct. 1 at 1:53 a.m.
A 17-story office building in Westwood is set to be converted to 320 new apartment units.
Douglas Emmett – a real estate investment trust that owns and operates office buildings and apartment complexes in Southern California and Honolulu – acquired the property, located at 10900 Wilshire Blvd., from Tishman Speyer for $131 million in January. Including the purchase price, the firm estimates that the project will cost between $200 million and $250 million.
Located across the street from the Hammer Museum, the 247,000 square foot office tower will be integrated into Douglas Emmett’s new residential building on Ashton Avenue to create one large apartment complex.
Stuart McElhinney, vice president of investor relations at Douglas Emmett, said planned amenities include a gym, pool and communal outdoor patio space.
Michael Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy in the Luskin School of Public Affairs, said the creation of more places to live in Westwood may make apartments for students a bit more affordable.
“Even if those units are above the reach of most students, the existence of those units might make it a little bit easier for people … to find lower price units around, because there’ll be fewer people competing for those,” Lens said.
Avrey Tokuyama, a third-year geography/environmental studies and public affairs student, said the new apartments would have amenities she wished her current apartment had, but she believes most residences with such features are generally out of students’ price range.
“A lot of times, most of me and my peers end up having to compromise. You either pay more than you were planning to, or you don’t have all the amenities or qualities of an apartment that you really wanted,” Tokuyama said.
McElhinney said in an emailed statement that Douglas Emmett is too early in the process to determine what the price range for rent in the new apartments will be.
The firm decided to convert the building to residences when the second of two major office tenants moved out, McElhinney said.
While not all floors are vacated yet, they will be converted as they become available. The company could make the first apartments available in the next 18 months, according to the company’s second quarter earnings report. This multiphase vacating process is expected to span “a number of years,” according to the report, and ground-up development of the new building should take approximately three years.
“What we have today in the in the tall tower is a lot of floors that have existing office leases and tenants that have the right to be there, in some cases for a number of years, but we also have a bunch of vacant floors that we can start working on soon,” McElhinney said. “Our intention is to go ahead and start converting floors to apartments as soon as we can.”
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