Gramercy Senior Housing is an affordable housing complex on a block-length lot formerly owned by the City of LA and used as a towing yard.   One of the first developments to utilize city-sponsored Supportive Housing (Prop HHH) funds, this project provides much-needed housing options to low-income and homeless seniors in one of America’s most expensive housing markets.

The site, long marked for redevelopment, has for decades sat untouched, presenting an unsightly blank-fenced façade to the neighborhood. After numerous false starts, in 2016 a competition process was held to determine the site’s future, and affordable housing developer Hollywood Community Housing Corporation (HCHC) was selected to lead the new building plans.

The 70,000SF mixed-use, high-density project includes 64 new apartments for senior (55+) residents making less than 50% of the area’s median income levels (with half designated for those who were formerly homeless), a commercial café, community spaces, and public plaza on the entry level.

Extensive public outreach informed kdA’s development process. The project is designed as six discrete buildings, reflecting the scale of the surrounding single-family residences.  Constructed in a narrow lot bordered by busy Washington Boulevard on the west and craftsman homes to the east, the complex will appear as a linear array of six separate structures connected by an exterior walkway system finished with an organic, loose trellis intentionally contrasted with the rationally organized residential blocks.

The massing of the buildings along Washington Boulevard are designed to be taller in order to shield those on the other side, providing additional privacy to residents and maximizing available light to surrounding parcels. Optimized for modular construction, the highly efficient floor plans in each structure allow for natural light and ventilation from both ends, while courtyard spaces outside of the apartments serve as shared living rooms for residents to gather. A rooftop edible garden offers additional shared community space.