Tall & Urban News

When she first laid eyes on Panorama Tower along Van Nuys Boulevard, Panorama City resident Cheryl Compton thought it “looked like a bomb had gone off.”

The windows were broken, trash and rubble were strewn nearby, and graffiti covered the mid-century style former office building.

In the quarter-century since the Panorama Tower was rocked by the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the building had sat empty, despite scattered proposals, including a short-lived idea to house a police station there, that city officials had floated to try to restore or redevelop it.

“It was definitely quite an eyesore, and the fact it sat for 20, 25 years was kind of unacceptable,” she said.

Now, 25 years and US$25 million in renovations later, the unveiling of the revitalized Panorama Tower is being treated as a truly special occasion. Los Angeles Council President Nury Martinez, whose district encompasses Panorama City, hosted a grand opening event on 27 February 2020.

The reborn residential building is another success story in Martinez’s drive to invigorate the Panorama City neighborhood, which had not only been struck by an earthquake but also the brunt of an economic tremor, the departure of manufacturing jobs in the 1980s and 1990s.

While the crippled structure sat unused, it provided a stark, idle departure from nearby busy shopping corridors, residential neighborhoods and a bustling high school, according to Compton. But four years ago, when Compton first moved to the area, the turnaround began.

The building caught the interest of a developer, Izek Shomof, an early pioneer in the “adaptive reuse” of older buildings in downtown Los Angeles’s Spring and Broadway streets, where he converted older buildings into lofts and live/workspaces.

Shomof bought the building in 2015 and began renovations to transform it into a 194-unit apartment complex. It now boasts 14 stories and 189,000 square feet (17,600 square meters) of space. Shomof said he could not understand why the previous owner had sat on the property for so long.

The mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments are going for a range of US$1,550 to US$2,350 per month, according to an online listing. They won’t last, it appears, Shomof says 70 percent of the building’s units have already been rented.

"No one can miss it"

When work first started, the building had been gutted of its wiring, he said, and it housed the area’s homeless community. Though shuttered, it was a conspicuous sight, one of the tallest structures in the San Fernando Valley, visible all the way to Sherman Oaks and Van Nuys. “No one can miss it,” he said.

The building was originally designed by Welton Becket & Associates, the firm responsible for Hollywood’s iconic Capitol Records Building, downtown LA’s Department of Water and Power headquarters and the Pomona Civic Center.

Shomof described the renovated building, with its 365-degree views at the top, as modeled after the modern style of projects that are also rising up on LA’s Westside or in the Wilshire corridor.

He said he has built homes and condominiums in the San Fernando Valley over the years, but this one is one of the few adaptive re-use projects he has helmed here.

Martinez, who grew up in the area and whose family benefited from the available jobs, said in an earlier interview that much of the damage that idled the Panorama Tower structure for so long had already been done, even before the earthquake hit.

Panorama City was planned as a regional economic center. The community is still a major employer and boasts homegrown jobs, including a smattering of retail sites, the Anheuser-Busch plant, and Kaiser Permanente, the healthcare group that got its start in the San Fernando Valley.

But while the Panorama Tower sat vacant, the rest of the area surged ahead with the transformation from the area’s manufacturing-propelled past. The General Motors plant turned into a mega-outdoor mall, called “The Plant,” that features retail stores, a movie theater and chain eateries. Panorama High School found a new home at the old Carnation Plant location.

And economic activity continues to flutter in the heart of the neighborhood, with a new Starbucks and an Aldi’s supermarket recently opening. In 2015, the Panorama Mall was purchased by Primestor, which will begin working on a project there, according to the councilwoman’s office.

Affordable residences and housing for people who are homeless are also being planned in the area, she said.

Recently, a project to build residential units at the old Montgomery Ward site was approved by the City Council (though it is currently caught up in a legal dispute between the developer and labor unions).

And a project that could tie it all together, a new light-rail line, is planned along Van Nuys Boulevard, with Metro anticipated to break ground in 2022. Compton is interested in seeing how it will impact the area.

The new, enlivened Panorama Tower is no longer a blemish on the community, Compton said. The visual change may be subtle, she said. It is about the same color as it was the day, four years ago, when she and her husband bought a two-bedroom condo in Panorama City. She believes it looks a bit brighter, though.

The purchase in Panorama City was a way to “build equity for ourselves,” she said. “It was a starter home that we could afford.”

But the rejuvenated tower and other nearby improvements, she said, will doubtless drive up values and costs in an area that has “not generally been a high-income neighborhood.”

And she’s aware of the reality of the changes: The rent of the new residential units, while matching those of today’s rental rates, will nevertheless cost “more than my mortgage for my two-bedroom condo.” In today’s market, however, that’s the price of change.

Shomof said he is proud of his towering achievement, which was celebrated at its grand opening.

“My satisfaction comes from taking an eyesore of a building,” Shomof said, “and making it beautiful.”

For more on this story, go to the Los Angeles Daily News.