A stretch of Hollywood Boulevard that saw a hotel proposal and an 18-story apartment plan followed by approval of a smaller 14-story building in 2022 now has a new contender: a modular housing complex with twin seven-story buildings and 168 residential units. The site sits just steps from Metro's Hollywood/Western Station, and the latest concept comes from SPF:architects, who are betting that prefabricated construction can succeed after the earlier plans.
According to Urbanize LA, the more than 230,000-square-foot development at 5600 Hollywood Boulevard would rise as two seven-story buildings rather than a single high-rise tower. The proposal would also set aside 20 apartments as affordable housing in exchange for development bonuses sought through the city's Citywide Housing Incentive Program, the outlet reports. That incentive ordinance became effective and operative on February 11, 2025, per Los Angeles City Clerk records.
SPF says the use of prefabricated modules will allow for cost savings of approximately 50 percent relative to standard construction, and that modular building is expected to shave the project's construction timeline by roughly six months, the same report notes. Those figures come from project-related sources and have not been independently verified.
A Site With A Long, Bumpy Development History
Attempts to redevelop the 5600 Hollywood Boulevard site date back to 2014, when a prior landowner sought to build a hotel there, the outlet's report states. That hotel proposal was rejected by the Central Area Planning Commission, closing the door on one chapter of the site's history before another began.
Bow West Capital later took over the site and sought to build an 18-story high-rise there, eventually receiving approvals for a smaller, 14-story building in 2022, per the same account. A separate city document from March 2021 described yet another version of the project at the time: a 17-story apartment building with 200 units, including 126 one-bedroom units, 71 two-bedroom units, and 3 two-bedroom townhomes, according to Los Angeles City Clerk filings. That earlier iteration would have reserved 40 units for Very Low Income households, compared with the 20 affordable apartments in the current modular proposal, the filing shows. That project sought a conditional use permit for a 115 percent density bonus to allow 200 units instead of the 93 otherwise permitted, and it was documented as eligible for certain CEQA streamlining benefits under Sustainable Communities Project criteria, according to the same city filing.
Separately, project architecture firm HKS Architects lists a program for the site with 200 residential units, split between 75 two-bedroom and 125 one-bedroom apartments, along with 20 percent very low-income units tied to the property's status as a transit priority project. HKS also describes plans for 1,500 square feet of street-level community space, plus co-working space and an exterior deck.
Why Builders Are Betting On Modules
The push toward prefabricated construction in Los Angeles reflects a broader trend. In high-cost markets like LA, modular construction is reducing the average cost per housing unit by more than 50 percent, according to Urban Land Magazine, which notes that builders can compress schedules by running site development and factory module production at the same time.
The Hilda L. Solis Care First Village in downtown Los Angeles, a roughly $48 million, 232-unit modular project, was erected in a matter of months, the same publication reports, with an average cost per unit of around $245,000 compared with about $535,000 for the average California unit at the time. The Corporation for Supportive Housing reports it supported 12 modular developments across Los Angeles County between 2020 and 2025, eight of which had been completed, delivering 468 units of affordable and supportive housing. That group has also flagged a risk in the sector: modular factories often struggle to remain financially viable without a steady pipeline of projects, which can lead to closures, restructuring, or changes in delivery timelines, according to the Corporation for Supportive Housing.
More Density Coming To A Changing Corridor
The 5600 Hollywood Boulevard proposal would join a handful of similar apartment buildings developed near Hollywood/Western Station in recent years, Urbanize LA notes. Wood Partners completed a 280-unit apartment complex across St. Andrews Place in 2018 and was later building a similar 160-unit project two blocks west, the outlet previously reported. About a half mile away at 5420 Sunset Boulevard, American Commercial Equities has proposed a 735-unit mixed-use complex, according to The Real Deal.
Whether the modular concept at 5600 Hollywood Boulevard moves forward after an earlier 18-story proposal was followed by approval of a smaller 14-story building remains to be seen. For now, the site stands as the latest test of whether prefabricated construction can turn a decade of false starts near Hollywood/Western Station into finished apartments.
