Los Angeles City Council moved to dramatically expand the city’s adaptive reuse policy citywide, clearing the way for empty office and commercial buildings across the city to be converted into housing.
The City Council voted unanimously to adopt a pair of ordinances that extend adaptive reuse regulations beyond Downtown for the first time in more than two decades.
The action repeals the city’s existing Adaptive Reuse Incentive Areas Specific Plan, which had limited conversions largely to parts of Downtown, Chinatown, Lincoln Heights, Hollywood and Koreatown. It also updates the 1999 Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (ARO) that helped spur more than 12,000 new homes in downtown alone.
According to a City Planning Department fact sheet, the updated regulations are intended to make it easier to convert older or underused commercial buildings, many left partly empty after the pandemic, into much-needed housing.
The revision expands eligibility for adaptive reuse citywide and introduces new incentives and streamlined approvals designed to make conversions easier.
The updated ordinance broadens the types and ages of buildings that qualify, allows more projects to be approved by right, adds incentive for developments that include affordable housing, and establishes design standards to improve ground-floor uses and the public realm. It will apply citywide outside the Downtown Community Plan area, which is governed by its own adaptive reuse regulations under the new zoning code.
City officials said the expansion is part of the Citywide Housing Incentive Program, a package of six strategies aimed at boosting housing production and helping Los Angeles meet its state-mandated housing goals. The adaptive reuse update is the first of those strategies moving forward.