Tall & Urban News

Skid Row Housing Trust and Michael Maltzan Architecture are planning a 150-unit supportive housing development tower in Downtown Los Angeles, made almost entirely of wood.

The 14-story timber building would replace a five-story apartment structure at 609–623 East 5th Street on Skid Row. Plans call for ground-floor case management services for residents, who would all be formerly homeless.

The Maltzan-designed building, named The Alvidrez in honor of the Skid Row Housing Trust’s longtime CEO Mike Alvidrez, will be a modern style building with staggered vertical sections, a white façade and offset windows, with some of the sections having rooftop terraces.

It could be the city’s first mass timber high-rise. Mass timber means that the primary load-bearing structure is made of wood, which is weaker than concrete or steel but is also cheaper. The Alvidrez is designed with “modular building blocks,” according to the Housing Trust.

Maltzan and structural engineer John A. Martin & Associates received US$200,000 in Measure HHH money from the city as part of a competition to highlight mass-timber construction.

New construction methods have allowed designers to build taller than was traditionally possible with wood. Sidewalk Labs, a design studio run by Google parent company Alphabet, recently unveiled a concept for what could be the tallest mass-timber tower in the world.

Skid Row Housing Trust’s timber tower will be located a few blocks away from a 100-unit project that the group has under construction.

For more on this story, go to The Real Deal.