The office crowd at Wilshire Park Place in Koreatown may be on borrowed time. Jamison Services is pressing ahead with a plan to turn the 11-story tower at 3700 Wilshire Boulevard into roughly 370 live/work apartments, using the city’s adaptive-reuse rules to swap cubicles for kitchens without adding height or extra floors. Parts of the parking structure are on deck to be reclaimed for resident amenities and upgrades, while the site’s broad, grassy front lawn, Liberty Park, remains the wildcard that has shaped years of fights over what can be built along this stretch of Wilshire.
Permits and project details
Permit filings on the city’s building portal show an active application to overhaul the existing office building into joint living-and-work units, complete with a seismic retrofit, exterior facade upgrades and partial conversion of parking into tenant amenity space, according to the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (permit record). The file, listed under plan check B25LA54071 and permit number 25016-10001-02676, was submitted on Dec. 31, 2025.
As of June 17, 2026, LADBS shows the application as "verifications in progress," with the Historic Resource Verification still marked "Not Cleared." The city notes that the scope of work does not change the building’s height or story count, keeping the adaptive reuse focused on interiors, structure and parking rather than a new skyline profile.
Jamison’s pipeline and financing
According to Urbanize LA, Jamison Services, which owns the Wilshire Park Place complex, filed the conversion permits as part of a broader play to turn underused Wilshire Boulevard office buildings into housing. On its own website, the company groups several nearby Wilshire conversions together in its development pipeline, signaling that 3700 Wilshire is one piece of a larger strategy for the corridor (Jamison Properties).
Industry coverage has also pointed out that Jamison recently secured financing for other Wilshire conversions, offered up as a sign that lenders are willing to back similar adaptive-reuse bets, including a reported $60 million lifeline for a Koreatown office-to-apartment makeover.
History and the lawn's preservation
The property opened in 1967 as Beneficial Plaza, with a deliberately set-back office tower and a highly visible lawn fronting Wilshire that was branded as Liberty Park. The building and landscape were designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill along with noted landscape architects, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy (LA Conservancy).
That expanse of grass, and the community’s determination to keep it, led to the site’s designation as Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1157 in March 2018. The move reshaped how redevelopment proposals are reviewed. A 2016 push for a 36-story tower on the site triggered the landmark nomination process and ultimately stalled that high-rise plan, a chapter that still looms large in city planners’ minds whenever a new proposal lands on their desks.
Regulatory hurdles ahead
Los Angeles City Council records confirm the landmark status for Beneficial Plaza and Liberty Park under Council File 17-1430, which means major changes that could affect the designated resource have previously required deeper environmental review and direct Council consideration (City Clerk). For this conversion, the LADBS permit entry still shows the historic resource verification as uncleared.
That means the project will have to thread the needle on preservation and planning rules before any building permit can be issued. In the near term, it is the paperwork, not construction crews or fresh renderings, that is likely to dictate how fast the plan moves.
Green space and neighborhood context
Koreatown is short on parks, which makes Liberty Park’s future especially sensitive. Even as housing proposals line Wilshire, the city and local partners are trying to carve out more small green spaces in the neighborhood. The city is advancing the acquisition of a vacant lot at 355 S. Kingsley Drive for a pocket park, and a separate pocket park is taking shape next to the Pio Pico Library, according to LAist.
Those efforts offer a bit of balance, acknowledging demand for public open space even as Koreatown’s housing stock grows along Wilshire.
What comes next
There is no construction schedule posted yet. The conversion plan for 3700 Wilshire is still in plan check, with historic and zoning verifications to clear before work can start. Neighbors, preservation advocates and city staff will be watching the file closely as Jamison tries to steer the adaptive reuse through the last rounds of review.
