Renderings revealed: 521 apartments at 2601 Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica

This post was written by Steven Sharp and published on 9/18/2023 on la.urbanize.city

Cypress Equity Investments has big plans for shopping complex at Lincoln and Ocean Park

A presentation to the Santa Monica Architectural Review Board reveals fresh renderings for a proposal which would replace a shopping center in the Ocean Park neighborhood with one of the city’s largest apartment complexes.

Last year, Balboa Retail Partners began working with Cypress Equity Investments on plans for a new mixed-use complex at 2601 Lincoln Boulevard. The project, which is currently named for its address, calls for razing existing parking and commercial buildings on a 4.7-acre site at the southeast corner of Lincoln Boulevard and Ocean Park Avenue. In their place, Balboa and CEI would build 12 new structures featuring a combined total of 521 studio, one-, and two-bedroom apartments, accompanied by approximately 30,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial uses and parking for 825 vehicles.

Plans call for 53 units of deed-restricted affordable housing, according to a plan set submitted to the Architectural Review Board.

Koning Eizenberg is designing the project, which would feature new construction up to six stories in height, oriented on a network of courtyards interweaved with public and private landscaped areas. Plans call for buildings clad in a combination of grey metal paneling, composite wood siding, white sand finish cement plaster, and fiber cement board.

“The overall concept for the project is a layered transition between the commercial Lincoln Boulevard and the garden neighborhood to the east, with mixed-use ‘boulevard’ buildings along Lincoln Boulevard and fully residential ‘garden’ buildings to the east that are woven together with a network of outdoor courtyard spaces,” reads a staff report.

The presentation for the Architectural Review Board is for feedback, and a vote on the design concept is not scheduled at this point in time.

As of last year, a project website advertises a start date for construction in 2024.

Cypress Equity Investments, one of the most prolific builders of apartments in Santa Monica in the past five years, has already constructed a series of smaller projects on Lincoln Boulevard in the city’s downtown. The project at 2601 Lincoln would be its largest yet.