CORRECTION: The next Historic Preservation Commission meeting, described in a city document as occurring on Monday, June 22, actually will occur on Monday, June 24.
UPDATE: The Historic Preservation Commission review of the proposal mentioned in the story below for a project on and around the property occupied by the French Market has been postponed. An announcement from the City of West Hollywood says the meeting has been postponed until June 24 because of a lack of a quorum for the April 29 meeting.
West Hollywood’s Historic Preservation Commission will hold a public hearing on April 29 about the proposal to dig a three-story parking garage under the French Market building and surround it with buildings that will include offices and retail and restaurant spaces.
The hearing will be held at 7 p.m. at the Plummer Park Community Center, Room 6, at 7377 Santa Monica Blvd.
The hearing follows one on Oct. 22 of last year at which members of the Commission expressed reservations about plans for the project by the Faring development firm and raised questions about the project’s environmental impact report.
The 83,000 square-foot project at 7985 Santa Monica Blvd., at Laurel Avenue, will preserve the French Market building, while the area that was the French Market’s parking lot will see a new building erected for retail and restaurant space. A four-story, 60-foot-tall office building will be constructed at the rear of the property.
The project will have 269 parking spaces in the three-level garage, with the parking entrance and exit on Laurel Avenue. While that garage is being dug, the French Market building will be underpinned with steel beams above the garage.
Faring’s decision to incorporate the French Market into the project addresses concerns by some who see the building as an important part of West Hollywood’s gay history. The original 1930’s grocery store structure was significantly remodeled to become the “Louisiana Purchase” shopping center in 1974. It underwent numerous renovations while known as the “French Market” until it closed in 2015. The market’s French Quarter restaurant was known for housing the office of the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles (MECLA), a political action committee in the 1970s that raised money to support gay-friendly candidates. When news that it would be replaced became known in March 2016, Rick Castro, in a posting on his blog, announced “FRENCH MARKET PLACE- THE END OF GAY.” Castro was owner of Antebellum Gallery in Hollywood, which billed itself as the only fetish art gallery in the United States. The French Quarter also has long been a gathering place for members of the LGBT recovery community.
“The idea that a three-level, 40-foot deep subterranean garage can be excavated from underneath an intact French Market building is simply not credible,” Commissioner Ed Levin said at the Commission’s October meeting on the project..
Levin also questioned whether the entire building would be preserved, as has been indicated, or merely the exterior façade, noting the draft EIR only states the “exterior” will be underpinned and how the “Santa Monica Boulevard frontage” will be incorporated into the project. While preserving the entire building might be technically possible, Levin feared the cost would be far too great.
Commissioners praised Faring for abandoning its original plan to demolish the building and instead moving ahead with the preservation plan.
Wehoville, please verify the rescheduled date of the Planning Commission meeting. The date you provided, June 22nd, falls on a Saturday. Did you mean to say Thursday, June 20, 2019?
The official Notice of Cancellation says Monday, June 22. Given that that Monday is June 24, it probably is an error. We will inquire.
June 22 is a Saturday. The HPC is having a meeting on a Saturday?
The official Notice of Cancellation says Monday, June 22. Given that that Monday is June 24, it probably is an error. We will inquire.
The traffic coming out of that building onto Laurel heading up to Fountain will create one of the worst traffic situations West Hollywood has ever seen. The project is just way to big for that lot. If this project is improved, it just shows that the Council has very little concern for the quality of life of the Residents.
Please approve of this. The building has become an eyesour in our neighborhood and attracts nothing but vagrants. Four years of nothing. I live on Laurel and it’s a loss to use all. Put something there. I am so sick of our city being bought up and boarded up with no plans or permits approved.
The rendering shows one of the nicer architectural designs proposed (or built) in West Hollywood in quite some time. If I understand the recent history of this project, the developer initially proposed tearing down the entire French Market building. That triggered the preservationists; Faring came back with this plan that retains the existing building and incorporates it into the larger project. (Oh how happy that result would have been for the Lytton Savings crowd…) Alas, Commissioner Ed Levin (who may or may not be a structural engineer) now doubts that Faring can dig a subterranean garage under the FM building… Read more »
Well said. If I were a developer, the heck with you West Hollywood.
SMB looks like garbage because of these excessive regulations and deterrents to improving the area. I’ve lived here 18 years and the the street still looks like a dump.