A $2-billion high-rise affordable housing complex is set to change the skyline of Warner Center and set a new precedent for assisted senior living in Los Angeles.
Senior housing provider Wellpointe unveiled plans for Viva L.A. at Warner Center, a cluster of four skyscrapers with 3,192 units to rise near the new Los Angeles Rams Village being built in the San Fernando Valley community.
The project has the backing of Mayor Karen Bass and local City Councilmember Bob Blumenfeld, and Wellpointe expects to start construction by the end of next year. Viva is the largest affordable housing project created under Bass’ Executive Directive 1, a 2022 order to speed up the city approval process for 100% affordable developments intended to reduce homelessness.
Viva’s towers, ranging from 34 to 42 stories, will easily be the tallest in Warner Center, a mixed-use community with offices, housing and stores created in the 1970s on the site of movie mogul Harry Warner’s horse ranch that was intended to be a “downtown” for the San Fernando Valley.
Warner Center is the commercial hub of Woodland Hills, a Los Angeles neighborhood of more than 70,000 people.
Viva will be Wellpointe’s largest development and a departure from its typical pattern of creating complexes of single-family homes in suburban settings in California cities such as Irvine and Fresno, where Wellpointe is based, Chief Executive George Kutnerian said.
Wellpointe has nine senior housing complexes in the San Fernando Valley, but it has had difficulty acquiring enough single-family homes in the area to significantly expand its presence, he said.
“That led us to create this vertical concept, which takes the core ingredients that we believe make our single-family model special, and we have essentially urbanized that in a vertical format,” he said.
A core ingredient of the concept is co-living, where qualified residents over age 50 have their own rooms with private baths and share a kitchen and living space with other residents of their “neighborhood.” Each floor will have two neighborhoods, where staff will prepare meals for residents and assist residents with their daily needs, such as bathing and getting dressed.
There will be no central dining hall, but there will be a commissary for staff, which will serve more than 2,000 workers by the time all four towers, built in phases, are complete.
“This is definitely a highly-staffed model” with 24-hour service, Kutnerian said, and will also include a daycare center serving the people who work there.
Plans call for ground-level businesses serving residents and the public, such as a bank branch, convenience store and coffee shop. Kutnerian also hopes to add a federally qualified health center that would receive federal funds to provide primary care at reduced rates.
To qualify for residency, tenants of Viva must have an average income of about 60% of the area’s median income, he said. That would translate to a monthly rent of $1,749, a figure that could be higher or lower depending on a tenant’s income.
Wellpointe will secure funding through typical channels used by affordable housing developers, Kutnerian said, which involve tax credits, private activity bonds and other private debt. “Wellpointe will also support the financing with its own capital in lieu of any direct subsidy from the city of Los Angeles,” he said.
High-rise senior housing makes increasing sense in urban settings as land costs rise and the number of people who need it grows, said architect Soo Im of Gensler, the firm designing Viva.
“By 2030, almost 30% of the adult population in the U.S. will be 65 and over,” she said, and their retirement could span 30 years. Being in a busy location like Warner Center with growing access to mass transit offers tenants more opportunities to engage with the city.
“Folks don’t want to live in a place where they’re just aging with other people that are aging,” Im said. “They want to be out and about.”
Within Viva, there will be community spaces for the residents with outdoor elements including raised gardens, a pool and a walking path, she said, and “each of the neighborhoods has its own outdoor deck, which is large enough to be an outdoor living room.”
Gensler is also working with Rams owner Stan Kroenke on his planned $10-million Rams Village mixed-use complex that goes far beyond offices and practice facilities for the football team. It is to include more than 3,000 residential units, entertainment venues, parkland, a hotel, restaurants and extensive shopping. The former Promenade Mall was demolished this year to help make way for the new 52-acre project.
“Having the opportunity to shape both Viva L.A. at Warner Center and the neighboring Rams Village lets us think about Warner Center not as a series of separate projects, but as a new urban neighborhood taking form,” said Gensler Principal Eric Stultz.
Both projects fit the intent of the Warner Center 2035 Plan adopted by the city to make Warner Center more of a pedestrian-friendly urban neighborhood rather than a collection of giant, self-contained blocks best approached by car.
Executive Directive 1 now has nearly 47,000 affordable housing units in the pipeline, Bass said. “We’re finally moving with the urgency and scale Angelenos deserve.”
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