belmont station opens, plays the green card
City West’s latest housing development to deliver is Essex Property Trust’s Belmont Station Apartments, scheduled to begin resident move-ins today.
Aside from its historic connections to the old Belmont Tunnel, the development is notable for its generous allotment of affordable housing – 55 of the 275 new residences have been set aside for low-income families.
No doubt a long list of applicants waited to stake claim on one of those coveted units, but a glut of market-rate inventory around Downtown and the property’s isolated location may pose a challenge to lease up the rest.
To sharpen a competitive edge, marketers behind Belmont Station are trying to build a case for its “energy-efficient design and a decidedly green footprint.” A campaign touting low VOC paints, Energy Star appliances, native low-water landscaping and a few other “green facts” is being tossed around the project website — yet strangely, no mention of the greenest of greens: Vista Hermosa Park across the street.
Judging from the hefty building amenities list, maybe they don’t expect people to ever step a foot outside.
-first look: belmont station apartments
-after a decade vista hermosa natural park arrives
24 comments
I’ve driven by this quite a bit. It’s a pretty unattractive development that maxes out the lot. Looks like something they would have built in Panorama City in 1993.
When this was under construction they had problems with neigborhood kids breaking the windows. I think filling this thing is going to be really tough.
i thought building here was a terrible idea, until vista hermosa opened. though it’s still a marginal area, that park alone should be enough to sell people on this place.
Nirad:
Agreed. Green space in LA is so hard to come by. To me, it’s one of the biggest selling points, especially for a building and neighborhood with no retail.
what are the rents?
Yeah, I live in this neighborhood. Kind of a weird no-man’s land sandwiched between Downtown and Echo Park. Unfortunately this development didn’t leave any room for retail, and it doesn’t look like there will be any coming any time soon.
$1,600 for studios, goes up from there.
1600? thats really high for studios in that area. are rents in large apartment buildings such as this one negotiable? has anyone had any luck doing so?
do u know if the 55 low income units have been rented out already?
I think there are 2 months free rent incentive also. My guess is the low income units all leased out a while ago.
Anon: You can usually negotiate with the smaller buildings, but the larger ones are corporate-owned and they want to hold the line on rents. Of course, it depends on how their vacancy rate is. Usually they will just throw in a month free, with another month’s rent prorated on a year’s lease.
Then you have to deal with the inevitable increase once your lease expires.
Many of us pushed for retail inthis project, but the non-profit’s greed for what they thought would be easier to rent aparments and the city’s willingness to forgoe anything that would benenfit the community prevailed. It is only fitting now that they will get far less for ther rents due to the total lack of tenant amenities in the project.
By non-profit, I mean the ogranizations that helped fund the non-market rate units – they helped push this project through with no retail.
Brady – then maybe what needs to happen is that the “affordable” units can only be rented out in relation to the number of “market rate” units that get rented. If only half the market rate untis are rented…then only half the affordable units are put on the market. That would provide a strong incentive for the non-profits to make sure that the building is attractive to more than just their clientel. They would have to commit to the long term viability of the entire project, and not just focus on what is in it for them. Issues such as “are the market rate prices too high?” (as they are in this case) would suddenly become relevant.
I am sure there are people who will scream that a policy like that is mean, but as buildings like this flounder in the marketplace, everyone is going to have to rethink how affordable housing is developed.
It will be interesting to see if all the new units that are coming to the market in downtown are actually being rented out? all of them are asking for high rents and with more supply coming to the market from condos, new projects, etc, and with the downturn of the economy, i dont really see buildings being filled up as fast as a few years ago. maybe you guys can investigate vacancy rates in downtown and compare it with your story from earlier this year.
http://www.angelenic.com/329/tight-downtown-leasing-market-source-of-stress-for-many/
As far as I can tell with my own building, rents are holding steady. That means the same as 2005 when I moved there. No rent hikes.
If that’s not at least somewhat equivalent to cutting rents, I don’t know what is.
Scott, I really really hope that’s the case with my building too. With everything going up (except my paycheck) I don’t know what I would do with a huge rent increase. Move back to the Valley? Urrggg, yuck.
I read somewhere on another blog (I think it was Big City POZ’s) where his rent in the Historic Core went up $400. Yowzas.
About 10 years ago people were building apartments without retail below, but it seems that times have changed and now l.a. can’t survive without condos above retail. This makes a lot of sense because it brings more comfotability to people when they have their cleaners, or their morning starbucks coffee downstairs. For someone to backtrack and build a somewhat nice apartment building but without retail space below is only going to create a problem for themselves. Everybody expects to have retail as close as they can in the city no matter what it is. My opinion is this building will do o.k. because of the park, and the close proximity to downtown, but it will not get the added attention because of no retail amenities in the area.
well….it looks OK, but I think it could have been a lot better due to its proximity to downtown. I personally think it should have been a lot taller, Im content with the exterior…not necessarily satisified but it will do. But I do commend them for all the low income housing they are providing, it is a step in the right direction.
while the rent increase that inspired joe to move to eureka is a loss for downtown, his rent had not increased at all since he was one of the first tenants to move into the old bank district. i wouldn’t use his rent increase as a data point to prove any sort of trend.
there are a ton of rental units coming online in historic downtown in the next year — i don’t think you’re going to see large rent increases anytime soon.
Does anybody know if they followed through on their plans to include a small exhibit of the Belmont Tunnel’s history in the building’s lobby?
In case anyone else was interested in the answer to my previous question, I did some investigating.
There are three photo sets of the original Red Car lines and Belmont Tunnel posted in the new apartments. One set is on the ground floor in the lobby and the other two are on the first floor.
I was told by the guard at the front desk that they also have plans for a small room with a video about the old rail line.
The emblem for the apartments also includes a red car at the center.
The apartments will be a sort of mini-museum to the Belmont Tunnel.
And on that front, the tunnel itself looks to have been re-sealed and completely repainted to wipe out all of the graffiti. The Toluca Station House also sports a new coat of tan-colored paint. Both are being integrated into a tiny park at the back of the apartments.
They are turning it into a dog park. Personally I would have turned that land into a red car attraction/museum with an original trolley from those days. Would have been perfect, only minutes from downtown, and would have brought more attention to that side of L.A.
I just signed my lease yesterday… got the SanBernardino 1 bedroom+loft for $1500.00… market price was 2100.00