Development Team
Owner/Developer
Samitaur Constructs
Culver City, California
Financing
GMAC Commercial Mortgage, Inc.
Pasadena, California
City National Bank
Beverly Hills, California
Financial Consultant
Stephen A. Lewis & Associates
Los Angeles, California
Architect
Eric Owen Moss Architects
Culver City, California
General Contractor
Samitaur Constructs
Culver City, California
Project Data
Project Address
Northwest corner of south central Los Angeles and southeast corner of Culver City
Project Size
22 acres (8.9 hectares)
Gross Building Area
600,000 square feet (55,740 square meters)
Number of tenants
40
Project Start
1986
Occupancy
85-90 percent |
Conjunctive Points
Los Angeles and Culver City, California
Located in a formerly devastated industrial section of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, Conjunctive Points offers a new way of thinking about what buildings are, and how they relate to each other, to commerce, and to art. With courage and tenacity, its developers are transforming a 22 acre (8.9 hectare) tract in Los Angeles and Culver City’s industrial zone into a unique urban environment that supports and incubates future technologies as it brings together creative individuals from the arts and industries in a physically and intellectually stimulating community, while at the same time converting environmental liabilities into extraordinary assets.
Developers Samitaur Constructs received no governmental or institutional aid for the project, and had to use inventive financing practices and personally guarantee early loans, since the area was seen as a high risk for investment and was effectively redlined. (National lenders now have replaced local banks in financing the project.) The developers and the architect have collaborated to design and develop strikingly unusual buildings—with names like the Stealth, the Umbrella, and the Beehive—that contain innovative workspaces now occupied by entertainment executives, film production companies, Internet-based firms, designers, dancers, and artisans. The project was instrumental in establishing an ordinance that allows architecture to fulfill the city’s public art requirement. Government studies indicate that Conjunctive Points has generated 8,500 new jobs.
Conjunctive Points already has been a catalyst for growth and development outside its own physical boundaries. Occupancy in the area has gone from 20 percent to nearly 85 percent, while business investment has increased by more than 200 percent, and property values and business taxes have risen by more than 500 percent. All of this has been accomplished with virtually no gentrification: there has been only a 2.2 percent turnover in the neighborhood.
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