A local non-profit organization's plans for new supportive housing in Downtown Los Angeles will soon face an appeal from a neighboring business owner.

In May 2019 the Coalition for Responsible Community Development filed plans with the City of Los Angeles to convert three buildings at 803-821 E. 5th Street into 95 apartments - including one manager's unit and 94 extremely low-income affordable units.  The adaptive reuse project would offer apartments averaging 275 in size with approximately 9,200 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and 10 parking stalls.

Plans show that Koreatown-based QDG Architecture is designing the proposed development, which would retain the three- and seven-story height profiles of the existing buildings.

The appellant, listed as Julia Joseph representing Alaska Seafood Co., is seeking to overturn a Zoning Administrator's determination issued in May which exempted the project from the California Environmental Quality Act and permitted apartments as small as 240 square feet in size - well below the 450-square-foot minimum typically required of projects approved through the adaptive reuse ordinance.

The appellant's primary objections to the project center on parking in the surrounding neighborhood.  In a note submitted with the appeal, Joseph claims that the property previously included a total of 32 vehicle spaces, and opposes any reduction from that total.

The appeal is scheduled for consideration at the July 14 meeting of the Central Area Planning Commission.

The three buildings slated for conversion include a three-story structure at 5th Street and Stanford Avenue which was completed in 1911 as a hotel catering to passengers coming to and from the former Southern Pacific Railroad Terminal at Central Avenue.  The two other structures, which date to the 1970s, were previously a rehabilitation facility for the Salvation Army.

Other real estate projects from the Coalition for Responsible Community Development are centered in South Los Angeles, including three ground-up apartment buildings along a two-block stretch of Main Street. 

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