Adaptive Reuse to Take on a Greater Role in LA Housing
Its 2,300 underused buildings could potentially be converted to more than 100,000 new housing units.
Facing extreme demand to create more housing, the City of Los Angeles is considering leveraging adaptive reuse of existing, underused buildings to create as many as 100,000 more units in the coming years.
Karin Liljegren, FAIA, founder and principal, OMGIVNING, spoke about strategy to do so at ULI’s Spring Conference on Tuesday in San Diego in the session, “CRE to Multifamily: What Makes a Successful Conversion.”
The Rand Corporation released a new report this month “Can Adaptive Reuse of Commercial Real Estate Address the Housing Crisis in Los Angeles?” where it forecasted that LA needs 800,000 new housing units to be created over the next eight years.
It identified 2,300 underused buildings in the city and said those could potentially be converted to between 72,000 and 113,000 new housing units.
“This is the low-hanging fruit,” Liljegren said. “The most successful conversions to housing involve hotels and office space to studio apartments. The most difficult are converting office to large apartment buildings.”
Density a Major Attribute in LA Housing
She shared some data that documented the tight urban conditions of the city and the important role adaptive reuse has played.
Approximately 12,000 of 37,000 new housing units created in the 5.84-square-mile downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) area since 2000 have been created through Adaptive Reuse.
While DTLA comprises just 1 percent of Los Angeles’ total land area, about 20 percent of all new housing in the city was created from 1999 to 2014, with almost 7 percent created through adaptive reuse.
Liljegren said she anticipates that LA’s adaptive reuse ordinance will be reissued this year to allow for more favorable conditions for developers.
Currently, it allows buildings to change uses by-right (no site plan review or triggered CEQA requirements); no new parking; allows new, one-story rooftop additions by-right; accompanied by a new building code chapter to clarify building code requirements; and provides incentives, not mandates.
Benefits of Adaptive Reuse
She also cited these benefits to urban adaptive reuse:
- CRE is typically in areas with access to jobs and higher-quality public transportation.
- Conversions from CRE to housing can create more mixed-use neighborhoods to allow for a more walkable and holistic community.
- Conversions from CRE to housing usually decreases traffic and parking requirements – as well as NIMBYism.
- Revitalization of underutilized buildings reduces blight, crime and creates engagement with the public realm around them.
- Reuse of existing buildings maintains a sense of cultural heritage – even if it’s a more recent “past” building.
“There are a lot of people who just love old buildings,” Liljegren said. “Every building has a ‘story’ behind it and there are so many ways to make an ‘ugly’ building beautiful. As a developer, you have to go in and truly ‘listen’ to the building and turn challenges into opportunities. You can’t just go in and take a hammer to everything.”
She said that while sustainability construction measures are beneficial to meet ecological goals, “it takes about 80 years for even the most sustainably built building to overcome the [wear and tear] it took on the planet to build it.”