Fitness studios, bocce ball courts and dog runs: downtown L.A. makes its pitch to apartment

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Sunday, May 5. I’m your host, Andrew J. Campa. Happy Cinco de Mayo! Here’s what you need to know to start your weekend:

Plenty of perks and cheaper than Santa Monica, downtown L.A. makes case to renters

A stroll through downtown Los Angeles presents a study in contrasts.

The city’s homeless community is on stark display with the population jumping by 10% in the latest annual survey. Office buildings once filled with thousands of employees are seeing vacancies skyrocket. The pandemic demonstrated to corporate America that “work from home” was possible and profitable.

Yet, while one side of the street is bleak, the other is chic.

Apartment towers and complexes along Figueroa, 7th, and Olive streets and other crucial thoroughfares are enjoying their own Gilded Age.

The recently completed Figueroa Eight skyscraper features limestone quarried from the same stone that built the Colosseum (the original one), New York City’s Lincoln Center and the Getty Museum. The building’s exterior is also brushed in aluminum, stainless steel and lightly tinted glass.

The nearby Beaudry and Atelier apartment towers are also ornately wrapped in metal and glass with tall tainted windows.

The decision to go big on Figueroa Eight, which opened last month, reflects an unusual disconnect playing out in the neighborhood: While downtown as a place to work still struggles to find its footing post-COVID, downtown as a residential center is thriving.

Canadian real estate company offers ideal case study

Downtown has about 90,000 residents, said Jessica Lall, head of real estate brokerage CBRE’s downtown office. They live in 47,000 residential units, most of which are apartments rented at market rates.

One quirk about that group is most of L.A.’s downtown residents don’t work there.

The successes and struggles of Brookfield, a Canadian real estate company that owns downtown residential and office properties, illustrates this divide.

Little more than 15% of the tenants in downtown apartments owned by Brookfield worked in nearby office buildings before the COVID-19 pandemic, managing director Mike Greene said. The percentage today is about the same. Occupancy in Brookfield’s nearly 2,400 downtown units fell to nearly 80% early in the pandemic, he said, but soon rebounded to about 95%, where it remains.

CBRE reported that only 65% of downtown office space was filled in the first quarter this year. Brookfield, meanwhile, which also owns offices through a separate entity, is among downtown landlords who have defaulted on office building loans in recent months and lost their properties to their lenders.

Prices, benefits and perks that attract renters.

Part of downtown’s appeal is its price, at least compared with the Westside’s choice rental markets.

“If you compare Santa Monica and Marina del Rey, it’s 38% more expensive to live there than it is to live downtown,” Lall said.

Upmarket apartment complexes have dramatically ramped up their amenities such as dog runs, golf simulators and maid service. And coming out of the pandemic, Mitsui Fudosan America and other landlords pivoted to making their buildings friendly to tenants who work from home.

There is dedicated co-working space for people who want to work outside of their apartments without leaving the building and other lounging spots such as poolside cabanas and outdoor spaces where tenants can set up a laptop.

Figueroa Eight’s indoor and outdoor “fitness studio” includes free classes and a hot-yoga room. Socializing zones include a poolside lounge with an outdoor bar, fire pits, grilling stations and the 41st-floor Sky Lounge with entertaining areas including a bar and dining room looking out on the skyline. There is also an outdoor hammock garden if you prefer to relax alone.

The Beaudry has a bocce ball court, putting green, golf simulator and poker game room among its tenant lures.

If downtown is to undergo a revival, it may be luxury rises that lead the way. For more, check out the original reporting from journalist Roger Vincent.

The week’s biggest stories

The Gaza Solidarity Encampment was created on the campus of Cal State University Los Angeles.

University encampments and protests

Education

Politics

International affairs

Lakers, Clippers postmortem

Environmental, conservation issues

Crime, courts and policing

Entertainment news

Transportation

More big stories

Get unlimited access to the Los Angeles Times. Subscribe here.

Column One

Column One is The Times’ home for narrative and longform journalism. Here’s a great piece from this week:

Robert Prokosh lives out of his car at the safe parking lot operated by Jewish Family Service in Mission Valley.

Is your co-worker sleeping in their car? You may never know. I had three jobs in the time I lived out of my car. Good jobs, too — serving $100 steaks and $1,000 bottles of Cabernet. No one ever knew. During that time, I found a job at a restaurant making $5,000 a month. Yet I remained in the Toyota. It was what I needed at the time to become the healed and whole father I am today.

More great reads

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.