A half-acre lot on Sunset Boulevard that was once destined for an Art Deco hotel tower is now the site of a far taller proposal: a 27-story apartment building with 239 units. Galaxy Commercial Holdings filed the application with the Los Angeles Planning Department on October 21, seeking to bring 239 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, including 37 reserved for very low- and moderate-income renters, to 6409 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.
The filing, first reported by Urbanize LA, describes a building rising roughly 300 feet with a rooftop amenity deck, about 6,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and parking for 227 vehicles. The roughly half-acre property had previously been slated for an Art Deco hotel tower, but those plans are now off the table in favor of the residential high-rise. SCB is designing the tower, with Relm serving as landscape architect, according to the outlet's report.
Density Bonus Sought for Larger Build
To build bigger than standard zoning rules would otherwise allow, Galaxy Commercial Holdings is requesting density-bonus incentives as part of its application, per Urbanize LA's report. Los Angeles offers developers several paths to that kind of extra capacity: the city's Citywide Housing Incentive Program lists the State Density Bonus Program, the Affordable Housing Incentive Program and the Mixed Income Incentive Program as the available options, according to the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. The dossier underlying this report does not specify which program, or what specific incentive percentage, Galaxy Commercial Holdings is pursuing for the Sunset Boulevard site.
This is not the developer's first large bet on this stretch of Hollywood. The same company secured approvals within the past year for a larger high-rise project at 6800 Sunset Boulevard, the report notes. That development, cleared by the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, calls for a 42-story tower with 304 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments alongside 115 hotel rooms, plus a separate low-rise building with 80 affordable units for very low-income seniors. As with the new 6409 Sunset proposal, the 6800 Sunset project relied on density-bonus incentives granted in exchange for including affordable housing.
A Stretch of Sunset Already Reshaping Itself
The 6409 Sunset filing lands in a corridor that has seen a string of ambitious high-rise pitches over the past decade, with mixed results. A similar 28-story mixed-use building was approved in 2019 to replace the former home of Amoeba Music at 6400 Sunset Boulevard. Further west, the two-tower Palladium Residences at 6201 Sunset were entitled back in 2016, with plans at the time calling for towers reaching 30 stories and housing 731 apartments, according to the Los Angeles Times.
That Palladium project illustrates how slowly even entitled Hollywood towers can move: construction never began after the development became tied up in a legal battle with the neighboring AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the Times reported.
For now, the project remains at the filing stage, with Galaxy Commercial Holdings' application setting out the broad contours of a 239-unit tower rather than a finalized design or construction schedule. The company's recent track record on Sunset Boulevard, including the 6800 Sunset approval, suggests it is positioning itself as one of the more active players reshaping this part of Hollywood's skyline.
