Highly anticipated TOD will enhance community living with its spacious plaza, transportation hub, boutique hotel, residences, offices, dining & retail amenities.

KFA  has announced that construction is about to begin on Ivy Station, a state-of-the-art transit-oriented development (TOD), that will surround the Culver City Station on Los Angeles’ Metro Expo Line. Located at the intersections of Venice, Washington and National Boulevards, Ivy Station, a development by Lowe Enterprises in partnership with AECOM Capital, will include a plaza for community gatherings and events, a boutique hotel, residential units, office space, and retail and restaurant amenities.

“In its expansive scope and ambitious design, Ivy Station is unlike any other TOD district in the region. KFA regards it as a privilege to be involved in this extraordinary project,” said KFA Partner Jonathan Watts, AIA. “It’s exciting to support public transit in Los Angeles with a project that will bring enormous value to its surrounding neighborhood,” he added.

Ivy Station is designed to offer a model for how to create livable, humane, thriving and vibrant communities along Los Angeles’ transit lines. KFA is a leader in TOD and is known for award-winning, innovative and influential urban design that has helped to define the architectural face of Los Angeles. KFA collaborated with landscape architects Melendrez on Ivy Station, which will incorporate a high-end boutique hotel with rooftop pool and several other exceptional features such as more than an acre of landscaped, public open space.

The TOD will serve as a multi-mobile transit hub offering alternatives that include 21 bus lines and ample underground parking for visitors and Metro riders arriving by car, bike and skateboard, all adjacent to the Metro Expo Line’s Culver City Station. A five- to six-story residential building and a five-story office building designed by Ehrlich Architects to qualify for LEED Gold certification will all have ground-floor retail and restaurant space for lingering, shopping, and dining. A Great Lawn and Central Plaza will accommodate daytime and evening special events, such as concerts, movie nights, wine and cheese festivals, holiday craft fairs and seasonal activities.

Named for the Culver City stop on the old Pacific Electric Air streetcar line, Ivy Station is the result of 16 years of planning to assemble the land and achieve the best solutions in all respects–financial, architectural, and aesthetic.  “It requires a city like Culver City, with deep commitment, vision, and the motivation to devote resources from our redevelopment agency, to bring a landmark transit-oriented development like Ivy Station to fruition,” said Culver City Community Development Director Sol Blumenfeld. “This project meets every one of our objectives, and we believe it will be an asset, not only to the surrounding community, but also the surrounding Culver City business districts like the Hayden Tract,” he added.

KFA’s Watts designed the master plan for Ivy Station as well as the hotel, residential, and transit plaza before he joined KFA. Although he has worked on larger developments, he considers Ivy Station to be “a once-in-a-lifetime project for an architect, in terms of the intense efforts devoted to its design and its hugely positive impact on the neighborhood,” he said. “I believe design is the real value architects bring to clients and communities.”