New Townhouse Project Coming To Eagle Rock

A major homebuilder has bought half an acre of land in Eagle Rock where a string of bungalows was set on fire to film parts of the HBO series True Blood and a previous proposal to build 19 townhouses was evidently the subject of a land-use controversy.

The land is located on 5036 Ellenwood Drive, on the corner of Merton Avenue and a stone’s throw from the south side of Colorado Boulevard.

It was bought on Wednesday for an undisclosed sum by Pulte Homes, a large, nationwide home building company owned by PoulteGroup, Jacque Petroulakis, a Phoenix, AZ-based spokesperson for the company confirmed.

Designed to attract couples and single families moving into Eagle Rock, the townhouse project on Ellenwood Drive would have contemporary floor plans and would go on the market as early as the first quarter of 2012, Petroulakis said, adding that “we believe the area is very popular and upwardly mobile.”

(Pulte Homes recently developed and sold a similar housing project, Rosecrest Lane, in the Victory Park area of Northeast Pasadena, Petroulakis said.)

Pulte Homes bought the land from Heyday Partnership, a Los Angeles-based company that initially planned to build the same kind of townhouse project that Pulte has undertaken.

Difficult Decision?

"It was a very difficult decision for us for numerous reasons," Kevin Wronske, one of the Heyday partners, wrote in a blog on the company's website. "As a small, local developer there is obviously a sense of ‘selling out’ to the corporate world. But our core belief is that the largest impact we can have is to influence other developers to follow similar principles to ours."

A self-described “design/build/develop firm,” Heyday built Rock Row, a 15-home project on Yosemite Drive, east of Townsend, that is Eagle Rock’s first LEED-certified building, according to veteran Eagle Rock RE/MAX Realtor and resident Cherryl Weaver. (The Eastsider LA reports that the land exchanged hands for an estimated $4 million.)

Unlike in the case of Rock Row, however, where every unit had individual parking and a separate area is dedicated to guest parking, the townhouse project on Ellenwood apparently ran into parking issues while Heyday was in permit negotiations with the City of Los Angeles.

The Ellenwood plot is “narrower and smaller [than Rock Row] and is a more congested area for parking because of all the churches,” says Weaver. “I think that’s why they [Heyday] decided to sell the property.” (Eagle Rock Patch is awaiting a comment from Kevin Wronske of Heyday Partnership.)

“But the idea is good because this community definitely needs more condos and townhouses,” said Weaver. "But we're going to get a lot of controversies from land-use committees in and the [Eagle Rock] ."

Townhouses and condos, adds Weaver, "is what people want to see.” With mortgage rates low again, the timing seems fortuitous for potential homebuyers, especially given that home sales in Eagle Rock have been brisk lately.

In July, for example, 55 homes were sold in Eagle Rock, compared to 46 in June, according to the Trulia real estate information aggregate site. Besides, as much as “50-60 percent of home sales last year were distressed sales,” says Weaver, adding: “In July, 36 percent sales were distressed properties.”