Clarett Group Brings Blvd6200-Multi-Use, Dense TOD- to Hollywood and Vine

The Clarett Group is a relatively new player in the West Coast development field. What brought Clarett to Los Angeles and what project is dominating your attention?

I think there are probably several factors that brought us here. An important one happens to be Blvd6200, which is our Hollywood project. It's the right size and magnitude to launch a West Coast office and to really have a West Coast presence.

We came in January of 2005, when we closed on a 99-year ground lease with the Nederlander family. We came out here to entitle that project. The Nederlander family and our founders have had a great relationship in the past, and the Nederlanders always believed that Clarett would be best suited to carry out this redevelopment of the adjacent land to the Pantages Theater, so that connection and relationship was obviously critical to structuring a deal and them having faith in their choice of developer.

Another reason was opportunity. We know density and mixed use. We're well respected and accomplished on the East Coast as a developer and a leader in high-rise development, and we truly believe that our expertise in density has a place in the future growth of Los Angeles.

Elaborate on the attraction to L.A. and the challenges of the L.A. market. What attracted Clarett and induced you to open an office and invest in Southern California?

Having the first project to launch an office is always helpful. The founders of the Clarett Group wanted to have an office in key markets. Today, we have one in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. We're not the kind of company that necessarily wants to be everywhere, but we want to be in key markets where we think we can find opportunity and contribute something to the overall benefit of the cities themselves.

Our background is high-rise building in Manhattan, where we do it well. We create wonderful projects, from the rental high-rise projects that we started with in 1999 when the company was founded, to the luxury condominium projects that we've produced since 2001. All have been great projects with great end results, not only for ourselves but for the communities they've been incorporated into.

There has been a lot of talk about the market. We believe that our Hollywood project is really capable of weathering any real estate slowdown, because we're producing new rental housing product. A softening condo market and a tough home mortgage market really leads to more of a demand for rental housing, as more people may opt to postpone ownership and choose to rent.

The other notable factor with where we're positioned in the market with the Blvd6200 project is that Hollywood is experiencing a modern-day renaissance. We consider ourselves part of the bigger picture of that Hollywood renaissance, where an emerging, walkable, residential community is being created on the eastern end of Hollywood Boulevard-and a walkable neighborhood in Los Angeles is a true commodity.

What are the project details and ambitions of Blvd6200?

Blvd6200 is a more than $400 million, privately funded investment. It's approximately 1.2 million square feet. If you include the parking, it's over 2 million square feet. We're scheduled to begin construction in the first quarter of 2008. As far as location, it's located on an approximately seven-acre parcel, directly across the street from the Pantages Theater. We're east of Argyle, west of El Centro, south of Carlos, and north of Selma. Our project is bisected by Hollywood Boulevard, so we refer to it as a north block and a south block.

On that north block and south block, we have more than 1,000 residential rental units, of which ten percent are onsite affordable housing without any public subsidy.

We have approximately 175,000 square feet of ground-floor, street-front retail and restaurants. We have approximately 40,000 square feet of live/work units with ground floor entrances. Through our outreach, we see these providing possible future homes to post-production and smaller entertainment companies. We've incorporated approximately 12,000 square feet of public open plazas on the Boulevard, and of course, with the philosophy of the city of Los Angeles, we're really thrilled to be creating a project that is going to feature sustainable design and have a green building program.

Talk a little bit about the team of contractors, architects, planners, etc. that you've assembled to bring to life this new model of high-density housing for Los Angeles.

We have a fantastic team, and everyone truly plays their part, from our land use attorney, Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro, LLP, to our community relations consultation, Handelman Consulting. Some of them deal with design aspects of the project; some of them deal with political aspects of the project and outreach to communities. As you're well aware, in the approval and entitlement process in Los Angeles, every factor is equally important. We have an architect out of Santa Monica, Van Tilburg, Banvard and Soderbergh. We have a structural engineer, Englekirk Partners. We have Donald F. Dickerson Associates as our MEPS engineers. We have a number of other consultants, from LEED consultants to vertical transportation consultants. It takes a group of many to put together a project like this, but we're very cognizant of the need to create a team that is capable of putting egos aside and really working toward the common good of a project.

Your architect is well known for dense development, and you've got a very dense, six story development project here. What were the challenges, trade-offs, and the ultimate result of the development process?

When you put together a project like this, you have to listen to what the people have to say. We were out in the community early and often. We think that communities are smart enough to recognize that not all density is bad, and we were able to garner unanimous community support from the Hollywood community for this particular project. We reached out to the city family early and often, and the city recognizes that density is the solution to a future housing crisis. It's notable that this project is directly across from the Metro stop, so it's density where you want density.

We have incorporated things that come from many different groups in the Hollywood community, such as public open spaces, live/work units, affordable housing, and a green building program. It's not one group that contributed these ideas; it's really our job as a developer to listen to everybody's input and then to weigh the pros and cons to create a project that is beneficial to the community, always trying to balance what's feasible.

Talk a little about the decisions that were made at the city level that were most helpful to the project. If you were going through the process again, what changes in processes ought to be put in place to encourage more high-rise, dense, affordable housing projects?

I'll start by saying that the approval process in L.A. was new for us. The approval process is dramatically different from New York, where approved, by-right zoning exists, and you anticipate starting a project nine to ten months after you acquire the land. It took Blvd6200 about two years to entitle. We had never gone through an approval process in L.A. before. This is the first project. I think it's fair to say that we learned a lot, and I feel that we're as qualified as anyone to do it again.

I think a lot of it has to do with the community outreach. It's balancing what the city family and the community want. It's trying to incorporate a combination of community benefits out of a project that represents smart growth.

We always try to look at the checklist: what are we giving back to the community? It's green; it's sustainable; it has affordable housing; it has vast, public open spaces where dining and gathering create a sense of place on the Boulevard; it brings residential to the Boulevard that hasn't existed in such a long time. When you create a smart growth project, you're creating a mass of people in a mixed-use environment that creates an inherent sense of security on the Boulevard. The pedestrian activity is most desirable.

As far as the approval process, timing, and what we went through, I went to the mayoral housing summit yesterday, and almost all the speakers and panelists talked about how this process needs to be improved, from the mayor to Council President Garcetti to Gail Goldberg. I think it's encouraging that leaders like them are committed to improving this system. Because I think, in the end, speed is a competitive weapon, and the timeframe influences the overall cost of the product. I think L.A. should really want to be as desirable a development city as any other.

What was Council President Garcetti's influence and impact on this project?

One of the first things we did when we closed the ground lease was we booked a flight, flew out here, and sat down with Eric Garcetti and his staff. It is amazing to see some of the project attributes that people point to as smart growth or give us recognition for including in a project, such as public plazas and affordable housing, live/work units, and green building. It's amazing to see those items incorporated into a project now, because they were the same items we talked about in the first meeting.

Council President Garcetti has been extremely helpful; he was supportive at the City Council approval. We were thrilled when he stood up there and told the rest of the council members that this project is as important to the city of Los Angeles as Grand Avenue and L.A. Live.

If TPR were to come back again in a year for a second interview with Clarett, what would be the likely subjects of our interview?

We'll be talking about a couple of our new projects, which we hope to be able to announce before the end of the year. I'd probably be giving you an updated status report on how excavation is going on Blvd6200. We have to move a lot of dirt.