Faring Capital Is Back With a New Plan — Robertson Row. Questions Remain

Faring Capital, the developer behind West Hollywood’s long-stalled Robertson Lane project held a community meeting Wednesday to present “Robertson Row,” a scaled-down commercial project for the 2.27-acre site at Santa Monica Boulevard and Robertson that’s been a vacant block(s) for nearly a decade. Several dozen people were in the Zoom session, the first public presentation since Faring’s entitlements expired last June. 

 Jake Stevens, Faring’s senior vice president, opened by calling the corner of Santa Monica and Robertson one of the most important intersections in the city. “This important block, just steps away from a brand new rail metro station at San Vicente Avenue, in the heart of the Rainbow District, deserves more than asphalt parking lots and tall warehouse walls crowding the sidewalk property line,” Stevens said.

The new project will have four one-to-three-story buildings totaling approximately 110,000 square feet of above-ground space. The presentation indicated it was designed for boutique retail, restaurants, cafes, “wellness tenants,” and gallery spaces connected by a network of pedestrian walkways and courtyards. A two-level underground parking garage and a 120-foot two-sided digital billboard on Santa Monica Boulevard will also be part of the project.

The Factory building

The centerpiece of the project remains the Factory building, the historic 1929 Trescon prefabricated industrial structure that housed Mitchell Camera Corporation before becoming Studio One, the iconic and pioneering gay disco, in 1974. The building was dismantled in 2020 with plans to reassemble it as part of the Robertson Lane hotel project. The Factory’s components have been in storage for nearly six years.

Under Robertson Row, the Factory would be reassembled and repositioned at the corner of Santa Monica and Robertson, facing the boulevard. Katie Horak, principal at Architectural Resources Group, said every panel, truss, and window was catalogued before disassembly. “Good condition and fair condition — all of those component parts were disassembled and are currently in storage,” Horak said. “Anything that was in poor condition was discarded because we couldn’t reuse those materials.”

She said the building’s Trescon system — a modular fireproof industrial construction method developed in the 1920s — made disassembly unusually tractable. New steel panels and windows would be fabricated to match original specifications wherever salvaged material is insufficient. The original woodblock dance floors from Studio One, which Stevens said are being stored in climate-controlled conditions, would be reinstalled.

Studio One operated at the site from 1974 to 1993. The National Trust for Historic Preservation added the Factory building to its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2015. The building is listed on the California State Register of Historic Places. Joan Rivers hosted one of the nation’s early AIDS fundraisers there in March 1984. The site later housed Axis, The Backlot, Girl Bar, Ultra Suede, and other LGBTQ venues through the 1990s.

Under the proposal, the reassembled Factory building would house galleries, restaurants, and cafes. Horak said interpretive materials telling the building’s history would be integrated into the finished project. 

A feature-length documentary, Studio One Forever, covering the club’s history from the disco era through the AIDS crisis, is now available on Apple TV and other digital platforms. “The Factory building will forever be an LGBT landmark on Santa Monica Boulevard,” Stevens said. 

Horak also confirmed all mitigation measures from the original Robertson Lane approval will hold in the current technical report. This means the partnership with ONE Archives, (the Los Angeles-based repository of LGBTQ history) to develop an on-site exhibition inside the Factory building, along with a planned oral history project tied to Studio One is still set to happen.

Design and layout

Duncan Paterson, design principal at Gensler, presented renderings that showed a village-like arrangement of buildings with shaded passages, pocket parks, and courtyards connecting the three street frontages — Robertson, La Peer, and Santa Monica. The project is bounded roughly between Robertson and La Peer from north to south across the block, with Santa Monica at the north end and the project adjacent to West Hollywood Park on the Robertson side.

“Every door is a front door,” Paterson said. “No street is left without a front door.”

Escalators would bring visitors from the subterranean garage directly up into the center of the project. Paterson said building heights were intentionally kept low — two stories on the Robertson side, three on La Peer — to create a transition toward the park and to the lower-scale buildings to the east. The architecture drew on what he described as Mediterranean village references reinterpreted through a contemporary palette of brick, natural wood, smooth stucco, and wrought iron.

Benjamin Anderson, principal at Office Untitled, presented the proposed 120-foot digital billboard at Santa Monica Boulevard. He said the structure will use a triangular truss system rather than a single pole to reduce visual bulk. Two sign faces with an organic “petal” shape are separated by open space, which Anderson said was designed to reduce wind load and perceived scale. He also said the sign was designed to “support the creation of a major civic moment and serve at the gateway to the newly designated Rainbow District.” Patterson said the project “creates an arrival experience that welcomes people from all directions.”

Entitlements and timeline

Land use attorney DJ Moore of Paul Hastings said the application seeks a general plan amendment, specific plan amendment, zone map amendment, certificate of appropriateness for the Factory building, development agreement, and a conditional use permit for wellness uses. The existing Robertson Lane Specific Plan, which has governed the site since the original 2018 hotel approval, would be renamed and revised to reflect the new project’s lower density and reorganized sub-areas.

The City retained third-party environmental consultant Dudek to prepare an addendum to the previously certified environmental impact report. Moore said Faring anticipates no new or more severe environmental impacts given the project’s significantly reduced scale — roughly half the square footage of what was previously approved, with no hotel and a shallower parking structure.

The application was submitted in August 2025. Environmental review is expected to conclude within the next month or so. A Historic Preservation Commission hearing is anticipated in July or August, followed by design review, a full Planning Commission hearing, and City Council consideration later this fall.

Questions

Jonathan Finestone, president of West Hollywood West Residents Association, asked Stevens to clarify an opening statement where Stevens appeared to list the association among community groups that had collaborated on the project. Stevens said he already addressed the issue at the top of the meeting after receiving Finestone’s complaint. “I am not in any way, shape, or form saying that West Hollywood West Residents Association has approved, been informed of, or been presented to about this project,” Stevens said.

One resident asked about tree coverage along Robertson Boulevard’s public sidewalk. Stevens said those decisions are made by the City, not Faring, and fall under the Melrose Design District streetscape master plan. He also said he had been unable to get the final streetscape plans from the City despite months of asking.

Another person on the Zoom asked about water table issues and potential flooding during construction, referring to similar problems at the Melrose Triangle project. Stevens said Faring has completed geotechnical studies and that the project’s two-level parking structure is far shallower than the previous seven-story excavation proposed for Robertson Lane. “We’re not creating Lake West Hollywood,” he said.

A business owner near the site asked how Faring would support neighboring businesses during construction. Stevens said the company would develop a construction mitigation plan and work with the Design District BID and the Chamber of Commerce, as it did during previous project iterations. He offered to meet with her directly.

One attendee gave props to the architectural approach. Another wanted a stated policy on unhoused people on the site. Stevens said the project would have security and declined to elaborate, telling them to email him for follow-up.

It wasn’t clear if Faring has financing in place or when they might break ground. Stevens offered no timeline beyond the entitlement hearing schedule. Faring’s track record has them letting entitlements expire on two major West Hollywood projects — Robertson Lane and the French Market. The result has been anything but good for residents. The Factory building has been in storage since 2020. WEHOonline reached out for comment on financing and if there was a projected groundbreaking date. We’ll update the story if we get a response.

Written questions about the project can be submitted to Stevens at jake@faring.com. Members of the public with questions about the City’s review process can contact Gallo at agallo@weho.org.

Robertson Row’s project addresses are 645–681 N. Robertson Blvd., 648–654 N. La Peer Dr., and 8954 Santa Monica Blvd.