New Apartment Brings Touch of Glamour to Los Angeles

Developer Cityview must have known what it was doing when it named a recent addition to Los Angeles' Canoga Park neighborhood Mira, which means "look" in Spanish.

The six-story apartment building at 21425 Vanowen St. is graced by two five-story murals, each of a person in profile: A woman, presiding over the building's main entrance and a man looming over Mira's clear blue pool. The larger-than-life paintings were completed just two months ago, according to the apartment building's social media accounts.

The building, finished early this year, sits in Canoga Park's Warner Center district, a growing business and retail hub in a part of the San Fernando Valley that developers have dubbed the "downtown of The Valley." It was built on ranch land once owned by movie mogul Harry Warner, who was one of the four founders of Warner Brothers studios, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.

Mira caught the eye of Larkspur, California-based Virtu Investments LLC, which bought the 174-apartment building for $70.5 million in fall 2019, before it was done. At a price per unit of $405,000, the deal was a higher than the average sale price for that part of Los Angeles, which then had an average market price of $356,000 per unit, according to CoStar.

The price may also reflect Mira's proximity to at least three large-scale redevelopment efforts. It is immediately north of a 47-acre site that was once a location for the aerospace company United Technologies, and the land has drawn interest from Edmonton, Canada-based Triple Five Group, the owner of the Mall of America in Minnesota.

Mira is also within walking distance of two projects by Paris-based shopping center operator Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield. As of January, the multinational firm planned to put $250 million into converting a former Sears building at its Westfield Topanga & The Village shopping center into a dining and entertainment district.

In late May, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield got Planning Commission approval for an even bigger redevelopment effort: a $1.5 billion project that would turn Westfield Promenade mall into an elaborate, mixed-use urban village called Promenade 2035 that is supposed to include hotels, apartments, offices, shopping, dining and a 7,500-seat enclosed sports stadium.

Cityview worked with several Los Angeles-area firms on Mira, including WPIC Construction, Ken Stockton Architects Inc., Togawa Smith Martin Inc. and Nadia Geller Designs Inc. Executives at Cityview were not available to comment on this article.

The other parties involved did not respond to requests from CoStar News. Likewise for its current owner, Virtu.

CoStar photographers capture images every day of distinctive buildings, each with its own story. Snapshots is an occasional feature showcasing one of them.