West LA Area Planning Commission Clears Venice Place Project

On July 15th the West Los Angeles Area Planning Commission cleared a mixed-use development proposal called Venice Place, located in the upscale Abbott Kinney Boulevard district. 

Wynkoop Properties, the applicant, will develop a hotel with a restaurant, four dwelling units, a spa, retail and office space located on the block surrounded by Abbott Kinney Boulevard to the West, Electric Avenue to the East, Broadway Street to the North and Westminster Avenue to the South. The project will contain frontage on all four of the circumscribing streets.

Under the terms of the proposal, some of the existing structures on the site, which include a restaurant, a private school, 2,200 square feet of office space, and a surface parking lot, would be demolished. Two of the three restaurant buildings on the current site will remain in the project, preserving the street frontage on Abbott Kinney Boulevard. 

In the new development, new structures will include the 78-room hotel, a new 3,810 square foot hotel restaurant, 2,935 square feet of ground-floor retail space including a market with 170 square feet of Service Floor Area, a 1,735 square-foot spa, and 2,027 square feet of office use.

Several improvements would be made to the abutting public right-of-ways as part of the proposal including closing several driveways to improve vehicular circulation and extending a sidewalk.

Four appeals were filed against the project from various community groups and a company called Abbott Kinney Investment Property, LLC.

The Planning Commission denied the majority of the appeals, but upheld them in part in their approval of the modified environmental findings and modified mitigation monitoring plan.