$44M Paramount Project Gets Green Light

LOS ANGELES—The City of Paramount has green lit a massive $44.4 million redevelopment project that will transform the City of Paramount into a regional mall with several national tenants. The project began pre-recession with funding from a municipal redevelopment agency, and was subsequently stalled during the recession. When the economy recovered, redevelopment agencies had been eliminated, leaving the City to seek private funding to complete the project.

"There is a site that had been marked as a redevelopment site where the city was committed to doing a sit-down restaurant, and they were committed to doing a sit-down restaurant because there has never been a national chain restaurant in the City of Paramount," James Rodriguez, SVP at Colliers International, tells GlobeSt.com. "Their hopes were to redevelop the site, and they did so using redevelopment funds, and they had some interest from restaurants. Then, the recession hit and that interest evaporated. Years later when the economy started improving, there were no longer redevelopment agencies and the City then had another challenge to overcome because they had to go through the process of disposing of the site and working with a developer." Rodriguez assembled the development partnership on behalf of the city.

Initially, Rodriguez began drawing up a list of potential developers that would partner with the city on the project and that shared their vision. "The city asked us to create a list of developers that we could work with to increase our chances of getting a sit-down restaurant," explains Rodriguez. "They wanted to find a group that shares their vision for this corner. We were brought in by the city to resolve this problem and the help them with the selection process."

During the selection process, Rodriguez had a vision to create a regional shopping center in the original site that would bring a sit-down restaurant, as the city envisioned, as well as shopping and entertainment options for residents. "The quality of the site was great. It is an A-plus development site," says Rodriguez. "What they wanted was special and we were able to put this team together to make that happen."

In the end, he put together a multi-developer project that is completely collaborative, to redesign and reactivate the downtown area. The new project is a 300,000-square-foot shopping district. The project has represented $44.4 million in development along Paramount Blvd. over the past three years, and nine leases have been signed totaling $36.9 million. The new tenants include Ross, Dress for Less, Applebee's, Chipotle, WSS, Autozone, Waba Grill and the Habit.