Jha Rules
Since the story by Staff Writer Liam Dillon at the LA Times was released on August 1, 2023, we’ve received a few inquiries to review and comment on the critical nuance of developer Akhilesh Jha’s entitlement pursuits for three separate multifamily projects within the City of Los Angeles. This write-up provides our critique of his 33-unit project entitlement at 8848 S. Gramercy.
1848 S. Gramercy is an 8,931 SF lot zoned C1.5-1VL. Mr. Jha likely understood immediately that the restrictive factor in executing the maximum unit count density and concurrently reaching an attractive unit size was the base FAR of 1.5. Mr. Jha decided to leverage SB1818 to make an off-menu and seemingly arbitrary request for a 6:1 FAR. This would ultimately result in the design of an 89’ tall 8-story building (6 story type III over two level type I garage above grade). Several other critical waivers of development standards were requested and made possible by state bonus density policy under the same code section explained below.
Jha Akhilesh
A man driven by principle or genius with master plan?
The planning department approved (seemingly begrudgingly) the 6:1 FAR and other requests for waivers by citing that under CA government Code Section 65915 and LAMC Section 12.22 A.25(C) the “Commission shall approve a density bonus and requested incentive(s) unless the Commission finds that: The incentives do not result in identifiable and actual cost reductions to provide for affordable housing costs…”
Essentially, Planning accepted Jha’s argument that the more FAR and other waivers you bake into this project, the less expensive it becomes to deliver the affordable component of this project.
I might argue, conversely, that a 6:1 FAR for a 33-unit project on a single lot site at this location makes the deliverance of the low-income component more expensive and less economically viable based on the enhanced cost per foot to deliver the Type III building coupled with a diminishing return per foot in rent based on the much larger average unit size afforded by the big FAR.
It would not have been difficult to provide a basic analysis and narrative lending to this assertion, but perhaps the City’s approval was by design (intelligently awarded to provide precedent knowing the chances of this iteration of Jha’s project going vertical would be slim anyway) and underscored by the reality that political tides have shifted enough such that fighting to stop density is no longer the side our planning department is willing to take even in the face of dissenting neighbors…as long as a reasonable lawful basis exists for such determinations.
While Mr. Jha was victorious in reaching the entitlement, the challenges ahead will be difficult terms of executing the project vertically. Simply put, it not an appropriate project for the site because there are alternatives which would make more sense at virtually every stage of the development cycle from capital to construction to operation. Mr. Jha has admittedly never built anything and, hence, the disconnect between his understanding of how to extract theoretical (entitled) density and the execution (build out) of such density is glaring. However, what he has done with the help of the planning department could prove useful in setting the stage for future, more mindfully appointed projects, to extract a more appropriate FAR on commercial zoned sites along the City’s commercial corridors.
Now, if you use bonus density on C zoned properties, FAR may no longer be a controlling factor and we owe that to Mr. Jha and the precedent created by this Letter of Determination.
That is why Jha rules!
