Among projects looking to make an imprint on West Hollywood’s skyline, the redevelopment at the Viper Room is back on the community’s radar following a new round of financing at the 11th hour.
Years in the making, the project’s fate seemed up in the air until a $71 million investment from Centennial Bank and Crestline Investors in July was secured. With entitlements in place, the project is expected to take shape soon, with development firm, Silver Creek Development, eyeing a 2029 debut. The Scottsdale, Arizona-based firm first acquired the property in 2018.
Charles Essig, Silver Creek’s managing director who is based out of Los Angeles, looks forward to seeing the 11-story, 269,263-square-foot mixed-use development rise. Comprising 88 residential units – 16 of which will be affordable – 90 hotel rooms, commercial, event and conference spaces, a rooftop pool, restaurant offerings, on-site parking and a reimagined Viper Room, the project will sit at 8850 Sunset Blvd. accompanied by a digital billboard through the city’s Sunset Arts and Advertising Program.
Prior to joining Silver Creek, Essig was a senior associate at Silverstein Properties in Manhattan where among other projects, he worked on the redevelopment of the World Trade Center. Essig spoke candidly with the Business Journal about Silver Creek’s journey to making this project a reality.
Walk me through the genesis of this project. What did Silver Creek set out to accomplish with this space?
When we acquired it in 2018, we really thought it was the intersection of work, live and play in a very, very strong submarket of West Hollywood which was a progressive development-forward city at the time. And we saw the opportunity to look at a city block just shy of an acre at the corner of San Vicente and Sunset Boulevard – which was part of the Sunset Specific Plan – to develop something extremely special here and thoughtful that would reimagine a site that was underutilized in our perspective to effectively deliver a mixed-use project that had a component of hospitality, residential living, as well as ground-floor retail that would reactivate the Sunset Strip.
What value do you think mixed-use developments bring and how did Silver Creek land on incorporating a boutique hotel into the development?
Given the density and how residential living abuts a commercial corridor, we thought it would be very important to think about how this intersection could be thoughtfully created in a denser living environment. By providing an additional 78 residences, alongside a boutique hotel, we thought that coupled with activating the Sunset Strip and also acquiring and developing the Viper Room to pay homage to live music – which is really the foundation of this part of Sunset Strip within West Hollywood – would be the right way to think about the future of this project.
Who are you looking to attract both for the residences and for the hotel?
The hotel keys off of the residences a little bit because the hotel and residences will be branded the same. So, the future hotel flag, which will be a luxury lifestyle hotel, will also provide services and amenities to the residents that live there.
With respect to residential living, I think (tenants) could be a combination of folks that exist in West Hollywood today or want to enter the West Hollywood submarket, given a very thoughtful project that has this mixed-use nature. It could also attract transient occupancy from folks in the entertainment or local industry, as well as potentially pied-à-terre or people looking to downsize from their homes.
Can you talk about some of the obstacles this project has overcome including some community pushback and financing hurdles?
Covid and certainly the interest rate environment did not help the commercial real estate sector as a whole. A majority of the marketplace faced similar challenges across the industry, no matter what asset class, market or business line you were in with respect to real estate. Those macro-facing factors were a challenge and headwind for most real estate owners and developers. That was just a global fact … that intertwined with our need to refinance the existing loan and effectively prepare for the future development here.
Related to the local nature of potential obstacles, I think again, with Covid taking resources away from the city, it was a challenge for developers to get projects through which was just outside of our control because we understood the city was being a good steward to residents and businesses in the community that existed, as they were just trying to make it through. (As a result), not having the full resource capacity at the city really tabled development and stifled that for a little bit of time.
Were there any changes made to the project along the way?
We actually reverted to (include) more residences and less hotel rooms as part of the mixed-use nature of the project when we needed to shift a little bit during (the pandemic). And now we’ve fully optimized the project and have really thought out a number of aspects that we think we can deliver on and are accurate for the offering…
We also previously had hired a local architect (and then) we shifted architects after that time in Covid to think about something more efficient. We brought in Arquitectonica to bring something with less height and density to the site. We had to be mindful of the entitlement process and really what we could deliver with respect to future density. So I think we thought about a redesign that was more palatable to the neighborhood as well as the city, based on the entitlement process and CEQA that is necessary to get additional density and height at the site.
With the Viper Room’s rich history in the area, how are you looking to honor that legacy and also build on the venue’s momentum?
(The Viper Room) is iconic, being that it opened in the early 1990s by Johnny Depp and a consortium of other owners. The venue was instrumental in really promoting live music, rock and roll and the history of Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. So as part of the acquisition of the real estate, we focused on acquiring this business and IP to ensure that we could do two things. Number one was to really pay homage and respect to this part of the Sunset Strip. (Second) is to preserve live music at this venue and the Viper Room name, to reprogram it into the subterranean portion of the overall project in the future. The goal is to have a live music venue named the Viper Room in the future that will be in a new state-of-the-art-facility, but still have that feel and look, if you will, as if you were in the old Viper.
Plans call to bring the Viper Room up to “today’s entertainment standards.” Can you expand on that?
What that essentially is alluding to is the fact that it will be a brand-new venue with new technology and everything that is effectively needed to support music today, including all systems and production, etc. Since we will have a small, 800-square-foot footprint on Sunset before you enter the subterranean live music venue, we will have a historic museum that will pay homage not only to the Viper Room, its prior existence and what it is today, but also to show what the Sunset Strip has effectively produced over the past decades in the city of West Hollywood… to show tourists and guests what that fabric has included.
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