Adaptive Reuse & Conversion Structural Work

The first Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (1999) turned Downtown Los Angeles' vacant office and industrial stock into thousands of homes. The structural scope of those conversions — seismic upgrades, shotcrete shear walls, new openings in existing concrete, added floors and mezzanines, new parking structures — was our core work through that entire era: the Eastern Columbia Lofts, The Standard Hotel, the Pegasus, Santa Fe Lofts, the Higgins Building, the Continental Building in the Old Bank District, Toy Factory and Biscuit Lofts in the Arts District, and dozens more.

Los Angeles' Citywide Adaptive Reuse Ordinance, adopted by City Council in December 2025 and effective February 1, 2026 (LA City Planning), opened that same opportunity to every building in Los Angeles at least 15 years old — by-right, with administrative approval. The second conversion wave is beginning exactly where the first one ended, and most conversion candidates are pre-1977 concrete buildings that also carry seismic retrofit obligations. Conversion and retrofit are one combined structural project — and we have built both, together, for decades.

We support developers and their architects from feasibility: structural budgets for acquisition underwriting, constructability review of conversion schemes, and pricing of the seismic scope that determines whether a conversion pencils.