843 N Spring Street Wins Sustainability Project of the Year from Los Angeles Business Journal

The Los Angeles Business Journal honored 843 N Spring Street with gold in the 2024 Commercial Real Estate Awards, recognized as this year’s winning project in the sustainability category. Read more about the project below and see the full Los Angeles Business Journal awards feature here to learn more about how this project and the other winners have enhanced Los Angeles.

As one of the first major cross-laminated timber (CLT) office buildings in Los Angeles, 843 N Spring Street embraces biophilic and low carbon office design, introducing mass timber to the region on a bold scale.

The new building provides beautiful, flexible office and retail space showcasing exposed CLT panels. The unique hybrid structural system combines 3 and 5-ply CLT and concrete slabs with exposed steel columns and beams that account for the building’s gravity and seismic loads, reduce the overall building weight, make the installation more efficient, and maintain an open wood ceiling both indoors and out.

The offices are situated around a voluminous tiered vertical garden that begins at the public plaza level and is accessible on every floor, bridging the gap between indoor and outdoor while fully embracing the local climate and maximizing access to daylight, fresh air, and views across the city. Each office suite also has access to an outdoor balcony or plaza, providing natural ventilation throughout the suites.

Formerly a two-story parking structure and indoor market, the 843 N Spring Street project adaptively reused the existing parking structure. Its new construction components are a model for sustainable design through renewable and energy- and water-efficient materials, long- and short-term bike stalls and EV charging stations, and an indoor/outdoor layout with lush landscaping and shaded, operable windows. The landscaping is irrigated by a 15,000 gallon cistern that captures stormwater. A voluntary 63 kW dc rooftop PV array, consisting of 175 360-watt panels, is expected to produce 94,500 kWh of electricity per year.

Preliminary calculations show an estimated reduction of 1,357 metric tons of carbon compared to traditional building methods, which is equivalent to keeping 287 cars off the road for a year or the energy needed to operate 143 homes for a year. There are 936 metric tons of carbon dioxide stored in the wood, and by using this material the project avoided greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 421 metric tons of carbon dioxide.