Ah, if only. People around here are fond of saying “God stopped making land a long time ago.” If not precisely scientifically correct, at least those words capture the emotional tone of the current predicament—we’re running out of dirt.

Allow me to qualify. It’s not so much that there isn’t bare land available anywhere, but powerful forces have conspired to make a great deal of it simply in the wrong place, even if for the right reasons. Of course, I’m talking about real estate suitable for the development of new multifamily communities. With the tiniest glimmers of light beginning to penetrate the dense fog of the “great recession,” it is time for new projects to enter the entitlement pipeline in order to properly anticipate the arrival of a better market, one in which the latent demand for dwellings will once again surface as people “un-couple” from the hybrid households that formed during our recent painful contraction. (Phew!)

So give us dirt! I have many colleagues in the development industry who are now on the prowl for a few acres of blank slate on which to sculpt their next multi-family masterpiece. Naturally, I want to assist the search in any way possible because I need work as well. So, partly at their bidding, but largely prompted by my own survival instinct, I’m keeping my eyes open, my ears to the tracks, (place your favorite cliché here) to pay attention for purchase and development opportunities.

Our industry, at least in California, is evolving. The give-back in rents of the last few years has had the effect of rendering nearly any project with structured parking essentially impossible to pencil. Back in the day, when rents were increasing, these dense infill projects could work. Construction costs have backed off considerably, but not enough to balance out the overall picture. And here’s the rub: to quote a friend frustrated by a fruitless search, “The sellers still think it’s 2006.”

Back in 2005, apartment REITS were consistently bid out of the competition for infill sites because for-sale developers could always offer more money for the land. Then by early 2007, with the declining market, many of these properties changed hands, with the for-sale teams bailing out through sales to for-rent developers.

Today feels eerily similar, but the problem doesn’t seem so much that the land is being bid up by for-sale guys; rather, the sellers all remember those days, and still expect inflated prices. To qualify yet another aspect of this, bear in mind that cultural pressures have gelled that make the wildly ex-urban properties (think 90-minute commute stuff) unpopular due to their “unsustainable” nature. All signs point to the logic of denser communities being built near and around transit, which has recently been resuscitated due both to public will and the infusion of recovery money. This means, of course, that all the land held in these zones is offered only at premium prices! Argh!

So what does it all mean? My buddies, the acquisition folks, are working harder and being more creative than I’ve ever seen. All my in-house colleagues are all trying to pay attention to the land market, though it is far outside our typical comfort range to do so, watching for leads. Everybody wants deals to be made so we can step up our work efforts.

All this effort is going to lead to “break-away” ideas—really new and unique propositions for properties that seemed unlikely in the past (see my post “Car-ied Away, from September 10th.) The municipalities may need to help, too, by offering incentives such as zoning overlays or parking relief.

Everything in me has that feeling that somebody, somewhere, is going to break through soon.

Bring it on!

(Daniel Gehman is principal at Thomas Cox Architects. He can be reached at DanielG@tca-arch.com)

How many times in the past year have I found myself saying, “You know, when the next recession comes along, doggone it, I’m going to have a hundred grand laying around so I can take advantage of these dang fire sales that are constantly tempting me.” Wishful thinking only? Well, perhaps, but let me explain the latest observation to spark this ambition.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a couple of occasions to enrich my in-depth appreciation of the City of Angels. First was a downtown walking tour, sponsored by the LA Conservancy, of the locations that were central to the summer indie film “500 Days of Summer.” This romp was a great deal of fun, despite it being the hottest day of the year. Of course, there were the typical trompe l’oeil effects of making one place seem like another—Old Bank DVD standing in for a record store, and another building on South Spring Street faking it as Tom’s apartment. At least the treasured Bradbury Building (site of Harrison Ford’s apartment in Blade Runner, only much prettier in real life) was played close to the real thing as an important meeting takes place there between the architect protagonist and a prospective client. (Could this be a thinly veiled reference to the developer who is actually headquartered in this Victorian confection?)

The city itself, however, played itself, rather than imitating New York, Philadelphia, or any number of loony third world outposts. It might be noted that often when LA plays itself in a movie, it ends up being destroyed—Terminator 2 and Independence Day spring to mind. So, in this quirky little study, not only does downtown play itself, but it survives, and even thrives.

Our tour guide pointed out that the producers of the movie deliberately edited out of strategic camera shots iconic LA structures that would have plainly painted it as a modern town: the Walt Disney Concert Hall; the Library Tower. Instead they focused on what they termed “pre-World War Two” architecture. At the end of the day, this gives the film a bit of a “timeless” quality, or at the very least, a romantic patina. LA has, by the way, the largest concentration of historic early 19th century buildings in the entire country.

But on to my sales pitch. This past weekend I went on a Downtown Housing Tour, which is sponsored by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District as a means to promote dwelling opportunities in the core of the burb. I have done this before, but there was a spate of new stuff I really wanted to see, including several historic buildings that have been adaptively re-used as apartments or condominiums (and for actual people, not for actors in a movie!) A couple really got my attention. The Rowan building, on Spring Street (the emerging artsy district) is extremely classy, with the signature feature of unimaginably large windows. Seriously, these monsters must be nine feet wide by six feet tall—and the open, too! It’s almost a wall of glass, except for the existing beefy structural columns that separate the openings. Awesome. Oh, and there are special transparent guard rails added to keep your French bulldog from plummeting over the sill.

If slick, modern, chic, amenity-rich living is more your style, Evo in the south park area offers it in spades. This brand new high rise in one of downtown’s other emerging hot spots has walls of glass, too, but of the modern variety, not to mention outstanding finishes and top shelf appliances. Without resorting to hyperbole, it is really quite jaw-dropping, especially on the upper floors, when the building breaks out above it’s tall neighbors.

Now, if you’ve got a bit of bank, you can snag a fine pied a terre in one of these buildings for a total song. I’m not exaggerating. The entry-level pricing at Evo is around $350/square foot; that’s probably $100/foot less than it cost the developer to construct this gem! The Rowan was one of the first downtown properties to offer a release of units at auction, which was a tremendous success for buyers, even if the seller lost money on every transaction.

I must say that if I were serious about moving downtown and could pull it off, I would probably have a very difficult time deciding between Evo and The Rowan. Too bad I won’t have to agonize about it now.

Somebody call me again in about eight years.

(Daniel Gehman is principal at Thomas Cox Architects. He can be reached at DanielG@tca-arch.com)

So I was sitting in a ULI professional conference on “Developing Green” several months ago and made a small note to myself. “What a good idea it might be to consider the adaptive re-use of shuttered automobile dealerships.” Well, imagine my ironic delight as I read in Globe St. this morning about a new arm of a well-known brokerage firm that had been set up to deal in “work-outs” for closing car lots. Hmmm. Should have registered my idea somewhere, I guess.

Anyway, I still find the notion quite compelling. Naturally, there are as many variants in the location of car dealers as there are option packages, but some of these sites might really work if re-purposed. The ones that spring to mind are those located right on the fringe of residential neighborhoods. Now, I’m aware that today is not the most propitious moment in history to be considering the development of new ground-up housing, but every now and then something comes along that’s just too good to pass up, at least as far as land values are concerned. So a dealership that has been family-run for three generations in the same spot—what’s the land value there? Wouldn’t re-zoning for multifamily or mixed-use development on some of these properties make sense?

On the other hand, what if some portion of the vertical improvements (especially some of those bombastic, palatial homages to the muscle cars and mini-vans of yore with the soaring volumes and granite floors) could be saved and given new life with some minor tweaking? Adaptive re-use is such a wonderful exercise in resource sensitivity; it just requires the proper brilliant design team and a fearless developer. But what uses might work?

I’m thinking a school might be a good fit (at least for a dealership close to residential areas—for those located under freeway off-ramps, maybe not so much). There’s one major assembly area, then lots of support spaces around it to be used for classrooms. Actually, when I hear myself describe it that way, it sounds like a church might also be a good use, especially with all that convenient surface parking scattered around. (The really frustrating thing about a church, of course, is how much surface parking is really required. Talk about designing for the Easter crowd.)

But perhaps there’s a creative hybrid (note the subtle car reference) to be generated with one of these properties, in a mixed-use vein. I could see an enhanced neighborhood center/transit hub where the local (alternate fuel) shuttle stops to pick up people bound for the train station or other public transportation. It could be a small school, library and recreation facility with a tiny amount of retail and maybe a handful of executive suites. Then, build as much multifamily housing around this highly recognizable central element as could possibly fit, generating lots of residents to interact with this new multi-use facility.

The shuttle-to-transit provision could possibly help reduce the amount of parking required for the new residential units, as well as bring interest and activity to the re-purposed dealership building, not to mention reduce overall vehicle trips and greenhouse gas emissions. One might anticipate some municipalities shrieking at the specter of having a huge tax-generating facility re-purposed as something that makes a more modest contribution, but this is a case where the greater good—say the holistic health of the community—needs to be considered over the mere means of income.

Besides, as everyone already knows, this is not your father’s Oldsmobile.

(Daniel Gehman is principal at Thomas Cox Architects. He can be reached at DanielG@tca-arch.com)