An update to Los Angeles’ 1999 adaptive reuse ordinance takes effect this month, and developers are already planning to convert underutilized commercial buildings across the city into apartments. The Los Angeles Times reported that the new Citywide Adaptive Reuse Ordinance opens the possibility of conversion for many more buildings than the 1999 guidelines, which focused on pre-1975 properties in Downtown LA.

Under the new guidelines, commercial buildings that are merely 15 years old throughout LA can be converted to housing with city staff approval, rather than going through lengthy review processes that may reach the City Council. “This is monumental for the city,” Garrett Lee, president of Jamison Properties, told the Times. “It addresses both the housing shortage and the long-term office vacancy issue,” which the Times reported now totals 50 million square feet.

Lee has already begun converting a large office high-rise on the edge of downtown into nearly 700 apartments. Across town, developer David Tedesco of IMT Residential is moving ahead with plans to convert the former Sunkist Growers headquarters in Sherman Oaks, a neighborhood that wasn’t previously included in the city’s adaptive reuse guidelines.

Pictured: Citrus Commons, IMT Residential’s adaptive reuse of the Sunkist Growers headquarters. Rendering courtesy of Johnson Fain.