Huge Plan to Turn Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza Into a 24-Hour Community
Once the Crenshaw Line light rail project is done in 2019, it'll have a portal directly into the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, and to meet it the BHCP is planning a huge and dramatic overhaul to make the 43-acre site into a round-the-clock community. Mall owners are envisioning a bold remake that would add two million square feet of new retail and hotel space, plus offices, condos, and apartments on nearly every spare inch of the site that's not yet occupied with a soon-to-be-rehabbed mall, reports Building LA.
Developers/mall-owners Capri Capital Partners are planning a separate "pedestrian-oriented retail village" where Stocker Street meets Crenshaw; it would have a collection of one- and two-story restaurants and stores grouped around a wide pedestrian paseo that would connect shoppers to the mall. The area would be liberally landscaped; from the renderings, it looks so similar to a Grove-like shopping center that you can almost hear the piped-in music. Though there are definitely pedestrian-friendly elements at work here, don't fret, drivers: there will also be plenty of parking. Despite new subway access right at its front door, at MLK Jr. Boulevard and Crenshaw, there will be 7,000parking spots split between the two sections of the site.
At Santa Rosalia and Stocker, the plans is to put up a 12-story hotel tower with 400 rooms. The hotel's plaza floor would match up with the retail village and would allow for a smooth connection between the two. The hotel would be a fairly standard-looking glassy rectangle with a blade of glass at each floor extending the length of the building. The hotel would also have a 74-car parking lot next to it, on the west side.
The office space would be on the other end of the property, where Marlton and Crenshaw meet Thirty-Ninth Street. Currently the location of a grocery store and pharmacy, the office building would be 14 stories tall and have an underground parking garage.
A lot of what's left of the space after that would be devoted to housing, both apartments and condos. Of the 961 total units, 550 would be condos and 461 would be one- and two-bedroom apartments. The condos would be over on the Santa Rosalia side of the site, in two five-story buildings next to two 50-foot-tall parking structures.
The apartments would be in what looks like a trio of seven-story buildings on the Marlton and Thirty-Ninth Street side of the project. All three would have groundfloor retail and one level of above-ground parking. Developers would like to attract a big market (85,000 square feet) to replace the one being taken out by the proposed office tower.
The timeline for this massive undertaking hasn't been firmed up yet and depends, of course, on securing funding. Regardless, it's now estimated that all the work will be done by 2020.
By: Bianca Barragan
