Los Angeles-based developer Giraffe has filed plans with the City of Los Angeles to construct a mixed-use apartment building in East Hollywood.

The project, which was submitted earlier this week to the Department of City Planning, calls for replacing a single-story commercial building at the corner of Lexington and Vermont Avenues with a six-story structure containing 29 apartments - including three affordable units -  atop ground-floor retail space and one level of basement parking.  Giraffe has requested entitlements with incentives through the Transit Oriented Communities guidelines, including relief from transitional height requirements, increases in density and allowable floor area, and permission to provide 21 parking spaces in lieu of the 61 that would normally be required by zoning rules.

The ground-floor retail space will be divided into two stalls, one of which will be used as the headquarters of its developer.

A rendering of the project depicts a contemporary low-rise structure.  Local architecture firm Yu2e Inc. is designing the Lexington and Vermont development.

Construction of the $8-million project is expected to begin in Summer 2020, according to a representative of Giraffe.

Giraffe is the third developer to file an entitlement application for an apartment building near the Vermont/Sunset subway station in the past four weeks.  The others are a proposed 92-unit development at 1317 New Hampshire Avenue and an eight-story, 58-unit mixed-use project at 1225 Vermont.