Costco's ambitious new plan to help fix California's housing crisis
Costco is building dozens of affordable housing units above its newest store so its can get around Los Angeles building restrictions.
The cut-price supermarket is planning a 185,000sqft store in South LA at 5035 Coliseum Street on a vacant five-acre lot that used to be a hospital.
However, building a huge store in LA required jumping through numerous regulatory hoops that would tie it up in red tape for years.
Costco could spend millions designing and developing the store and millions more on consultants to meet regulations, and still fail.
Costco is planning a 185,000sqft store in South LA at 5035 Coliseum Street
Most of the units range from 350sqft studios to 605sqft two-bedroom, one bathroom apartments
Instead, it used a rule where mixed-use housing developments with certain attributes are exempt from some of the rules.
To do this, the development had to be two-thirds housing and Costco went beyond that with 471,000sqft of housing.
The housing will include 800 apartments, of which 183 are reserved for low-income affordable housing. The project is being developed by Thrive Living.
On top of that was another 56,000sqft of amenities including a gym, multi-use community space, courtyards, a rooftop pool, and gardens.
Costco also needed to use unionized labor in its on-site construction, and so to reduce labor costs as much as possible it used pre-fabricated units.
The housing will include 800 apartments, of which 183 are reserved for low-income affordable housing
The results is a design that resembles a prison or a college dorm building in its design with lots of corridors full of small units
Those units are built elsewhere by cheaper workers and trucked in, meaning most of them had to be small one-bedroom apartments.
The results is a design that resembles a prison or a college dorm building in its design with lots of corridors full of small units.
Most of the units range from 350sqft studios to 605sqft two-bedroom, one bathroom apartments.
California is struggling with a housing crisis with 181,000 people homeless and an average rental price of $2,800 a month.
The store will be built on a vacant five-acre lot that used to be a hospital