West Hollywood Pit Project Pivots From Offices to 282 Apartments
Developers of the stalled Melrose Triangle site in West Hollywood submitted new plans that replace earlier office-heavy designs with 282 apartments, including 66 affordable senior units, and nearly 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. The revised project, presented at a May 27 community meeting, calls for three seven-story buildings connected around a central courtyard, with 528 parking spaces across three basement levels. The 2.7-acre triangular parcel has sat as an excavation crater since construction halted in 2021, earning the nickname “Lake WeHo” from locals. Renderings by Corbel Architects and SWA Group show a pedestrian-oriented design with entries from Santa Monica Boulevard and the Melrose Avenue-Almont Drive intersection.
Earlier versions of the project included as much as 225,000 square feet of offices and only 76 apartments. The shift reflects changing market conditions that have made multifamily development more attractive than office construction in Southern California. The Charles Company, the developer, began excavation in 2021 but let entitlement permits lapse, leaving the pit vacant in a high-traffic shopping and nightlife district. City officials ordered the site backfilled in 2025 after the entitlements expired, a mandate that would require moving roughly 270,000 cubic feet of dirt. Developers are racing to secure new approvals to avoid the expensive fill-and-re-excavate cycle.
West Hollywood first approved a version of the project in 2014, but repeated redesigns and legal troubles delayed progress. Arman Gabaee, co-managing partner at The Charles Company, was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison in 2022 after being convicted of offering a county official a million-dollar home in exchange for a $45 million lease. The new plan includes about 61 percent one-bedroom units and 39 percent two-bedrooms, with ground-floor courtyard dining venues and two sixth-floor restaurants totaling 8,500 square feet. The project provides 58,000 square feet of open common space, well above the city’s 2,000-square-foot minimum, and must still pass through the city approval process before construction can resume.
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