KEY PROJECTS
3545 Wilshire Blvd.
Location: 3545 Wilshire Blvd.
Description: Jamison is working on two towers at 3545 Wilshire Blvd.: 32- and a 14-story buildings featuring 428 apartments with 864 parking spots between the two towers. The mixed-use project will also have 32,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.
Developer: Jamison Properties
Architect: Gruen & Associates
Completion date: March 2024
Western Station
Location: 8th and Western
Description: This project rehabbed a vintage 1931 five-story Art Deco parking structure to create 230 apartments above 13,300 square feet of retail in a new eight-story development.
Developer: Jamison Properties
Architect: KTGY Architects
Completion date: November (recently opened)
636-646 S. Berendo St.
Address: 636-646 S. Berendo St.
Description: The 22-story residential tower will feature 343 units made up of studio and one-bedroom apartments above a two-level, 45-vehicle subterranean parking garage.
Developer: Berendo Inc.
Architect: HansonLA
Completion date: NA
640 St. Andrews Place
Address: 640 St. Andrews Place
Description: The eight-story building will feature 230 units in a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom floor plans as well as parking for 133 vehicles. The project will include 23 low-income units.
Developer: Jamison Properties
Architect: NVE Architects
Completion date: NA
KOREATOWN BY THE NUMBERS
Office:
Inventory: 8.5 million square feet
Vacancy rate: 26.4%
Asking rent: $2.38
Under construction: 0 square feet
Year to date net absorption: -87,448 square feet
Source: Newmark Group Inc.
Multifamily:
Inventory: 43,780
Vacancy rate: 3.5%
Asking rent: $1,836
Under construction: 2,864
Year to date units delivered: 762
Year to date units absorbed: 702
Source: Newmark Group Inc.
Hotels:
Hotel Rooms: 1,709
Under Construction: 0
Proposed Rooms: 769
Source: Atlas Hospitality Group
5 Questions with Jamison’s Garrett Lee
Koreatown-based developer Jamison Properties has become a prolific builder in Koreatown
with more than 32 projects completed, under construction or in the planning stage.
Garrett Lee has been president of Jamison Properties since 2014. He is part of the family-
owned business, which his father, Dr. David Lee, founded in 1997. His sister Jaime Lee is chief executive of Jamison Realty, the company’s commercial real estate leasing and brokerage division, and his brother Phillip Lee leads Jamison Services, the commercial property management arm of the company.
Question: What makes Koreatown attractive for your residential projects?
Answer: Koreatown is ripe for development from a zoning perspective. When the city planned out L.A. many years ago, Wilshire Boulevard was the main thoroughfare from downtown to the beach. This little pocket of Wilshire Boulevard, they planned to be very high density and high commercial uses for the city. They specifically planned to have unlimited height so you could construct office buildings as tall as you could and have high density. Even the adjacent side streets are for high density.
Are there other reasons why Koreatown is a good place to build?
Another reason Koreatown is ripe for development that is more specific to us is the fact that it’s an adaptive reuse-incentive area. There’s a limited number of areas in L.A. that are adaptive reuse. It allows you to convert office to residential and it gives you a lot of breaks from the code that would normally make it difficult from a zoning perspective and from a fire-safety perspective.
The whole purpose it was created for downtown 20 years ago was to take vacant, distressed office buildings and turn them into something useful like residential, which everyone needs right now, and to do it in an environmentally productive way rather than demolishing and rebuilding. So, Koreatown allows adaptive reuse and we have a lot of old office buildings here and in our portfolio specifically that due to work from home and Covid and the economy are good candidates to develop. So, we’re actually going to develop a lot of office into multifamily.
How has that strategy worked for Jamison so far?
It’s something we have been doing. We’ve finished seven of them already, all in Koreatown, about 1,500 units — all through adaptive reuse. We were not really planning a lot more, but because of Covid and the economy, we’re going to do a lot more in the future.
What are some of the projects that Jamison is building in Koreatown?
We’re doing a new construction high-rise in the heart of Koreatown, which is 3545 Wilshire Blvd. — 428 units right on Wilshire Boulevard. It spans from Wilshire to Sixth (Street). It’s next to the Line Hotel and BCD Tofu House, two landmarks of Koreatown. Great location. It’s right across the street from the Normandy Metro station. High density. A lot of parking, some retail as well. We started earlier this year and we’re targeting March 2024. The Sixth Street side is about 10 stories up and the Wilshire side is about eight right now.
What do you enjoy about being a developer?
You’re creating something from scratch that people get to enjoy or live in. It’s exciting to contribute to a neighborhood and see it grow and develop. We’re fully homegrown in Koreatown. Our company has been doing work here for decades, both on the office side and retail and now on the residential side. So, we’re very invested both personally and economically in the community. Real estate in general is a fun industry. The people you get to work with are both creative on the architecture/design side, but also there’s finance, there’s construction, so it’s a good mix of a lot of different things.
