Venice Boulevard in Palms may be on the verge of a serious growth spurt. A developer has submitted plans for a seven-story, 490-unit apartment complex on the south side of the corridor, replacing a low-slung retail strip near Metro's Culver City Station with hundreds of new homes, street-level shops, and rooftop decks.
The proposal calls for a mix of studios as well as one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, ground-floor commercial space, and separate rooftop amenity decks for each building. The application also includes a set-aside for affordable housing while asking the city for incentives that would let the project exceed base zoning. If the city signs off, the complex would add to a steady wave of housing and office construction that is already reshaping the Culver City–Palms stretch around the station.
Per Urbanize LA, Wiseman Residential has filed an application with the L.A. Department of City Planning to overhaul the retail center at 9000–9020 Venice Boulevard, the parcel between Robertson and Culver boulevards. The filing describes a seven-story development with 490 studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom units stacked above 15,689 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and parking for 266 vehicles. Plans identify 64 apartments as reserved for extremely low-income households in exchange for citywide housing incentives, and project renderings credit Reed Architectural Group as the designer.
What the city is being asked to approve
According to the case file posted on the L.A. Department of City Planning portal, the developer is seeking entitlements tied to citywide housing incentive programs that would allow construction beyond what the site's base zoning would normally permit. That request sets off a procedural chain that includes public notice, an intake review, and, depending on staff findings, either an environmental assessment or an exemption process before any formal hearing is scheduled. The online case entry lays out the basic program details along with the specific discretionary approvals the project is asking for.
How the proposal compares to earlier listings
Previous concepts for the 9000 block of Venice Boulevard were more modest and included a hotel component. Consultant materials from ACE MEP, for example, describe a multi-building plan with roughly 369 residential units paired with hotel space. As Urbanize LA notes, the current 490-unit proposal is the largest of several recent Wiseman projects along Venice Boulevard and joins a growing cluster of transit-adjacent developments around Ivy Station and Apple's nearby office campus.
Next steps and neighborhood reaction
The Planning Department is expected to place the case on its calendar for staff review and community outreach, and residents who want to keep tabs on the process can follow updates through the department's online portal. Local meeting materials show that the Palms Neighborhood Council has repeatedly taken up large Venice Boulevard projects, with members raising familiar worries about traffic, parking, and building design, according to neighborhood council packets. Those community comments, along with the final structure of any incentives, will help determine how many deeply affordable units the developer ultimately locks in as the project moves through the city's approval pipeline.
