Legado Encino Apartments Offer Solar Power and Some Free Rent, Too

Legado Encino Apartments, located on Ventura Boulevard opposite Mercedes-Benz of Encino, opened its doors in 2012 to tenants. The building is LEED certified, which means that it has environmentally friendly features like solar lighting.

Patch spoke with the architect, Stephen Albert of the Albert Group, about some of the features of the building.

How did your firm become involved in the project?

We were retained by the original company who owned the property and then by Legado. We had meetings with the city. The city wanted to have an example of what they called the Livable Streets program, a property with a friendly street edge, setting back the residential area. So that's what we did. There are a lot of 'in and out' places to have planting and a bench to give a friendlier 'edge' to the street.

How did the decision for a contemporary-style building come about?

The comtemporary scheme came about because that's the kind of work we [the Albert Group] do. Instead of having a fake Mediterranean style, we would go beyond that and continue the contemporary new look for Ventura Boulevard. We came up with a different color scheme; its metal panels on the face of the building are now grey-white. There were technological challenges in getting the project into the hillside, as there are several levels of underground parking.

The building has environmentally friendly features too, like solar lighting. Can you talk a little about that?

Sure. It's LEED certified, which is the city's new green building ordinance. The lights in the common areas are all powered by solar power, for example. That's a big swath off the energy consumption of the building.

A branch of the Equinox gym chain has its sales office in the building. Was it always the plan to build something that would be mixed use, both for residential and business? It's fairly unusual in Los Angeles.

Mixed use is the biggest factor as far as the "Liveable Streets" program goes. Not only do the street edges encourage pedestrians to walk by, but by living there, then, as a city is starts us down a road of living near where you work. The more mixed use buildings there are, the more opportunities to live near where you work. [In the Legado apartments] there are a certain percentage of affordable units and its near transit, it's near a bus route. You can walk down the street to businesses and restaurants. Responsible development takes advantage of that.

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Legado Apartments Encino, 16710 Ventura Boulevard Encino, Tel: 818-986-7368, email: encino@legado.info. The leasing company is currently offering two months free rent on certain rental agreements.

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