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Photo by LAC staff |
On May 26, the Los Angeles City Council approved a settlement agreement with AIMCO Venezia, owners of Lincoln Place, a historic 33-acre, 1951 garden apartment complex off Lincoln Boulevard in Venice. After a decade-long saga, all of the existing buildings will be rehabilitated, eighty-three evicted tenants will be able to return, and hundreds of rent-stabilized units will be returned to active use on the Westside. Congratulations to the Lincoln Place Tenant Association and our longtime Modern Committee volunteers who worked so hard to make this happen! A special thanks to Amanda Seward for her leadership as the ModCom residential committee chair and for her work on the California Register nomination.
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Photo by Amanda Seward |
Built between 1949 and 1951 by architect Heth Wharton (who also designed Chase Knolls Apartments) and African-American designer Ralph Vaughn, Lincoln Place Garden Apartment complex is one of Los Angeles’ few examples of large-scale garden apartment design. Like Chase Knolls in Sherman Oaks, Wyvernwood in Boyle Heights, and Village Green in Baldwin Hills, Lincoln Place is characterized by modest yet modern two-story apartment buildings organized around landscaped courtyards, creating a park-like setting to foster community interaction. Lincoln Place originally contained 795 one- and two-bedroom units in fifty-two buildings; previous demolition left 680 units remaining in forty-five individual buildings.
The threat to Lincoln Place first came to the attention of the Conservancy through our Modern Committee in 2001, when the previous owner initiated a renovation and redevelopment plan incompatible with the complex’s modernist design. The plans transformed into a full-scale demolition and redevelopment plan to build hundreds of market-rate condominiums, and ownership changed hands to Denver-based AIMCO (Apartment and Investment Management Company), the nation’s largest apartment-holding company.
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Photo by LAC staff |
The fight to save Lincoln Place evolved into an epic preservation and tenant-rights battle with illegal demolitions, undue political influence, several lawsuits, multiple hearings before the State Historic Preservation Commission (always with the same positive determination of historic significance), and ultimately evictions and almost complete abandonment of the property.
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Photo by LAC staff |
The settlement agreement approved by the City Council is the last of three agreements that ends this period and starts a new phase for Lincoln Place. The Historic Preservation agreement, signed in the spring of 2009, details development restrictions and rehabilitation requirements to historic standards. All existing buildings will be preserved. The Tenant agreement from summer 2009 resolves more than fifty individual lawsuits by tenants and was signed by more than 200 tenants. Eighty-three prior tenants will return to Lincoln Place at pre-eviction rental rates. All three agreements are now signed and awaiting court approval to become effective.
The City Council’s approval also allows AIMCO Venezia to begin the entitlement process for a project that includes rehabilitating the existing units and constructing ninety-nine new units to replace demolished units. The unit count will return to the former total of 795 apartments.
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