This Mixed-Use Trend Is Expanding Across Local Cities
The Pasadena City Council approved a Final Tract Map creating multiple “air parcels,” including one designated for a commercial condominium.
This could signal how future neighborhood commercial space will be created — and similar structures are increasingly appearing in Santa Monica, Culver City, and parts of Los Angeles.
What You Need to Know
Pasadena approved a subdivision that separates one building into legally distinct pieces stacked vertically rather than divided by traditional lot lines on the ground.
This allows a mixed-use project to have separate ownership for residential units, retail space, and sometimes parking within the same structure.
The ground-floor commercial space can now be sold as its own property (“commercial condo”) instead of being leased and controlled by the apartment owner. Developers use this structure to help projects pencil financially — selling the retail component helps offset construction costs while still delivering housing above.
As housing policies continue to push higher-density development, many projects that once might have produced standalone retail buildings are instead being built as residential projects with ground-floor commercial space embedded within them.
How It Impacts You
Air-space subdivisions have long been used in large mixed-use projects to separate hotels, retail, and residential ownership within a single building, and cities are now seeing the same ownership structure applied to smaller neighborhood developments.
Service responsibilities may be split across ownership parcels. Janitorial, security, and maintenance contracts may cover only part of a building, and determining responsibility for shared systems will require clearer scopes of work and more communication among stakeholders.
This approval is best understood as a trend indicator. Cities still want street-level retail along commercial corridors, but financing traditional retail centers has become difficult.
Air-parcel mixed-use projects allow housing to be built while still delivering storefronts, restaurants, and neighborhood services.
Over time, that could mean much of the region’s future commercial inventory will come from residential developments rather than standalone retail buildings.
For nearby properties, this changes the environment around a building.
As more of these developments are approved, buildings will increasingly compete not only on their interior space, but on the surrounding neighborhood experience and available amenities.
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