A vacant half-century-old courthouse in San Pedro is getting closer to being replaced by an eight-story mixed-use building that will bring more landscaped open space and a food hall into the historic downtown shopping district.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which owns the property, are set to approve an option to the county’s lease agreement on Tuesday, Aug. 10, that would provide a $1 million loan to help the owners of the future mixed-use building fulfill a tax exemption requirement, which would clear the way to designate 20% of the units as affordable housing.
That agreement also instructs development firm Genton Cockrum Partners to move forward with demolition, requiring them to file a permit application to do so with city of Los Angeles in the next 90 days. And the agreement mandates the project use union labor, with the developer set to work with the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Trades Council.
Capping off years of behind-the-scenes work, Bill Cockrum, senior managing partner and president of GCP, said Tuesday’s vote is something of an “exclamation point” in the approval process.
“We’ve been working for three years with the county to get through this,” he said. “We’re very excited for San Pedro; we very much want to create a terrific asset that adds to the community.”
The old courthouse, which was built in 1969 and closed in June 2014 — along with other L.A. County courthouses to cut the budget — will be demolished once the developer receives a permit from the city of Los Angeles. Construction is expected to take about two years.
Demolition is anticipated to occur at the end of the year, Cockrum said, with construction to begin around summer 2022.
The project was formally launched in 2017 when Los Angeles County supervisors approved purchasing the property for $5.2 million. Envisioned was a medium- to high-rise, mixed-use project with amenities for a public gathering space and cultural, retail, restaurant and residential uses.
The current layout will offer 20,000 square feet of ground floor retail, with half of that devoted to a food hall.
Discussions are ongoing with potential tenants for the ground floor spaces, Cockrum said, but announcements probably won’t be made until the project is close to finishing.
The initial drawings were unveiled two years ago but criticized by some community members as too contemporary. A later design appeared to be better received.
At least one of those critics, however, wasn’t impressed with the most-recent rendering he’d seen.
Warren Gunter of the downtown Business Improvement District board, said he’d spoken to the developer about incorporating some of the Art Deco design elements seen throughout the historic port downtown.
“He seemed open to the ideas but we certainly don’t see any in the latest rendering,” Gunter said. “We can only hope that some changes along those lines may be on the way.”
Cockrum said planners are not finished with design elements on the ground floor. Those elements, he said he believes, will answer many of those concerns.
Cockrum said he walked the streets of San Pedro with Gunter during what was a lengthy and amicable conversation.
The plan is to “integrate a more ‘masonry’ feel to the arches and columns along the facade” on the ground floor, Cockrum said, to blend with some of the historic elements seen on downtown San Pedro buildings.
“We love the old architecture and want to celebrate it,” Cockrum said. “We can’t create a historic building, but we’d like to add some synergy to it. I committed to (Gunter) that we would do that and we will.”
Gunter, for his part, said he did like the building’s orientation, which features a raised pool deck facing Sixth Street.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, in a written statement, said the finished project will be a “good fit” for San Pedro.
She called it “the kind of development the downtown area needs,” adding that it will provide more jobs and residents who will shop downtown.
The building, 505 S. Centre St., has been viewed as an opportunity site to create a hub that will both cater to downtown and foster connections to the nearby redeveloped waterfront set to open late next year.