Downtown Santa Monica’s latest rental player is stepping into the spotlight right across from a neighbor with serious financial baggage.
Tishman Speyer’s Santa Monica Collection has started pre-leasing at 501 Broadway, an eight-story, podium-style building directly across from The Park in downtown. The project brings 89 new apartments over ground-floor commercial space, plus a landscaped rooftop deck for residents, adding yet another batch of fresh rentals to a downtown that has been steadily filling in with new construction.
The building is listed as “Now Preleasing” with expected April move-ins and leasing contact info on the Santa Monica Collection site. Market-rate rents for the new units range from $3,255 to $6,641 per month, with 18 deed-restricted apartments reserved for households earning between 30% and 100% of area median income. Deed-restricted one-bedrooms start at around $595 a month, according to the Santa Monica Mirror.
Building and design
KFA Architecture is now listed as the architect of record, taking over from entitlement plans previously prepared by Michael W. Folonis Architects, while Milender White serves as general contractor on the finishing work, according to project materials. Below ground, the development includes a three-level subterranean garage with space for 71 vehicles and roughly 145 bicycle stalls. The plans also call for about 5,522 square feet of common open space, including that rooftop deck.
On the street, roughly 7,260 square feet of ground-floor retail is expected to line Broadway. Upstairs, the unit mix leans heavily on one-bedrooms, with a smaller share of two- and three-bedroom apartments, as detailed in coverage by the Santa Monica Daily Press.
Part of a larger push
501 Broadway is just one piece of Tishman Speyer’s larger Santa Monica Collection, a package of eight entitled downtown sites the company picked up from WS Communities in 2022. The first phase features several nearby buildings — 1430 Lincoln, 1650 Lincoln and 711 Colorado — that together will add hundreds of rental units and nearly 19,000 square feet of retail to the area, according to Urbanize Los Angeles.
Downtown context
Location-wise, 501 Broadway is staring straight at The Park Santa Monica, a 249-unit complex at 500 Broadway that defaulted on more than $400 million in loans late last year. That default, detailed by The Real Deal citing Bloomberg, has become a high-profile example of the pressure weighing on multifamily financing and the tension between luxury projects and relatively modest affordable set-asides.
While 501 Broadway includes a small number of deed-restricted units, the advertised market-rate rents are a reminder that downtown Santa Monica remains an expensive proposition for many renters.
Prospective tenants can sign up through the Santa Monica Collection’s pre-leasing portal or reach out to the leasing office for details on availability and move-in dates, per the project’s website. For recent photos and construction progress, check out coverage on Urbanize Los Angeles and the Milender White project page.
