About a year after closing on a Long Beach office property with plans to replace it with housing, Holland Partner Group has cleared the first approvals hurdle on the way to getting shovels in the ground.

Holland Partner Group got the green light from the Long Beach Planning Commission last week to demolish an existing two-story office building at 6700 East Pacific Coast Highway and replace it with a six-story, 281-unit apartment building. The mixed-use project will include about 3K SF of retail and 28K SF of common space, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported.

First-quarter multifamily occupancy was 96.6% in the South Bay, which includes Long Beach, a Colliers report found. Rents were up 2.2%, to $1.8K and there were about 6,000 units under construction at that time, according to Colliers.

Long Beach Planning Commissioner Richard Lewis said at the meeting that the project was exciting because it is located in a part of town that is "a gateway to our city" and "full of potential,” the Press-Telegram reported.

The project will rise along a part of Pacific Coast Highway that is between Studebaker Road to the northeast and Marina Way to the southwest.

HPG bought the apartment building in February 2022 for $41M. It has a couple of other projects in the city, including the 271-unit Volta on Pine in downtown Long Beach and an under-construction project called 3rd & Pacific, which is slated to wrap up in 2025, according to the Long Beach Post.