After a decade of stalled plans, design overhauls, and a change in ownership, a massive student housing complex has finally opened its doors at 3900 South Figueroa Street in Exposition Park. The Standard at Los Angeles, an eight-story, 1,261-bed complex developed by Landmark Properties, now stands where a surface parking lot once sat across the street from BMO Stadium, replacing years of empty asphalt with 429 apartments, five renovated 1920s townhomes, and a sprawling amenity package built to compete for USC students' rent checks.
According to Urbanize LA, the project's entitlement application first went before the City of Los Angeles back in 2016, and the finished building marks the conclusion of what the outlet calls a ten-year journey from paper to reality. Wood-frame construction wraps a central parking garage that will serve residents, guests, and Exposition Park event attendees alike, per the same outlet's reporting, with HED serving as architect of record. The final building includes studio through five-bedroom apartments, five interior courtyards, multiple study lounges, and a club room, alongside 15,000 square feet of retail space.
From Hotel Tower to Student Housing
The site's transformation long predates Landmark's involvement. Irvine-based developer Ventus Group spent years entitling a megaproject on the parcel known as “The Fig,” or Exposition Point, originally valued between $300 million and $450 million and featuring a 298-room hotel alongside student units, market-rate apartments, and 96,000 square feet of retail, according to Urbanize LA's 2022 reporting. Ventus dropped the hotel component that year as shifting market conditions and pandemic-era travel disruptions pushed developers toward pure residential density instead.
Landmark Properties bought the fully entitled 4.5-acre site for $114.8 million in February 2024, according to Connect CRE, before breaking ground on its own vision for the property. At that groundbreaking, developer plans called for 1,284 total beds, but final delivery announcements this month confirmed a total capacity of 1,261 beds across the 429 apartments and five renovated townhomes, per CRE 360 Signal — a net reduction of 23 beds during final construction design.
Historic Townhomes Preserved Alongside New Construction
Five 1920s-era townhomes along the property's eastern border, facing Flower Drive, were retained as a condition of city approval meant to preserve residential character within the Flower Drive Historic District, Urbanize LA reported. Those townhomes provide space for 48 additional residents. The project's 87 very low- and extremely low-income housing units were likewise a condition of project approval, folding affordable housing directly into a luxury-branded student complex.
Rents in the new building start at $1,317 per month for one-bedroom units, according to leasing information cited by Urbanize LA, while broader lease-up pricing tracked by Capdex shows rates ranging from $951 to $2,014 per bedroom per month depending on floor plan and bedroom count. The building's amenities lean heavily into resort-style extras: a rooftop pool deck with a Jumbotron screen, a sports simulator, an outdoor dog park, and a fitness center make up over 60,000 square feet of interior and exterior amenity space, which Landmark Properties describes as one of the largest amenity footprints in its national portfolio. Apartments arrive fully furnished, per the developer's news release.
Part of a Bigger Landmark Push Near USC and UCLA
The Standard at Los Angeles is Landmark Properties' third property near the USC campus, joining Icon Plaza and West 27th Place, and it sits alongside The Mark Los Angeles in Westwood, where the Athens, Georgia-based company also completed a building near UCLA. Landmark separately has a 12-story tower proposed on Landfair Avenue in Westwood. With this delivery, the company's Southern California footprint now totals roughly 3,400 beds across four student housing communities serving USC and UCLA, according to Capdex. Landmark bills itself as the top student housing developer in the country, managing more than $15 billion in assets across upward of 115 residential communities and 76,000 beds nationwide as of this year, per PR Newswire.
The building is one of several similar housing projects underway along the Figueroa corridor near USC, Urbanize LA notes, reflecting a broader wave of purpose-built student housing construction feeding the university's off-campus rental market.
Construction Arrives Amid Olympic-Driven Investment and Tenant Pushback
The Standard's completion lands as state and local agencies carry out more than $100 million in transit, walkability, and public infrastructure upgrades throughout Exposition Park ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, according to Commercial Observer, with the neighborhood also set to host the late-2026 opening of the $1 billion Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Exposition Park is expected to serve as a major venue hub for Olympic athletic events and ceremonies.
That surge of investment has not arrived without friction. In April, senior residents and organizers with the Los Angeles Tenants Union staged protests over Ellis Act evictions near Exposition Park along 39th Street, warning that long-standing rent-stabilized housing is being cleared to make way for high-density redevelopment. Tenant advocates have argued that local relocation aid remains insufficient for displaced long-term South LA residents, even as new complexes like The Standard bring hundreds of beds and dozens of income-restricted units to the same stretch of Figueroa.
