A 12-story apartment building with zero parking spaces could rise next to the E Line in Santa Monica under a new filing that marks the city's second project using a state transit-housing law.
Developer Bruce Adler filed plans in August to replace a single-family home at 1517 15th Street with a 138-foot, 32-unit residential building near the 17th Street/Santa Monica College station, Urbanize LA reported. The project would include one- and two-bedroom units and set aside six homes for very low-, low- and moderate-income households in exchange for waivers and development incentives.
The building would consist of 11 floors of mass timber construction above a single-story concrete base.
It would provide no vehicular parking.
No public comment from Adler about the project appears in city records. The filing is listed as case number 26ENT-0187.
A jump in scale
The filing represents a dramatic increase from Santa Monica's first SB 79 project, a five-unit, three-story townhome development proposed at 2904 Delaware Avenue near the Bergamot station. That project, filed by Eric Silverberg through Ficus Forest LLC, includes five parking spaces and rises to roughly 40 feet.
What SB 79 allows
SB 79, the Abundant and Affordable Homes Near Transit Act, took effect in July 2026. The law allows multifamily housing as a by-right use near major transit stops across Los Angeles County, according to Patch.
Santa Monica's four E Line stations qualify as Tier 2 transit-oriented development stops under the law. Immediately adjacent to those stops, the base standards allow heights up to 85 feet and densities of 140 units per acre. The 1517 15th Street project's 138-foot height exceeds that base, relying on additional waivers and density bonus incentives beyond SB 79's floor.
The City Council adopted an ordinance in July 2026 temporarily excluding six of the city's seven transit-oriented development zones from SB 79 requirements until 2030. The Expo/Bundy zone does not yet qualify for that exclusion.
Neighborhood opposition and next steps
City Manager Oliver Chi said in an Aug. 25 Santa Monica Lookout article: "The remaining zone (for the area around the Expo/Bundy station, whose half-mile radius reaches into our Pico Neighborhood) does not yet meet the State's threshold to qualify for that exclusion."
The Council voted 6-1 on Tuesday, July 28, to allow multi-family development on 89 single-family parcels in that zone. Mayor Caroline Torosis and Councilmembers Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, Jesse Zwick, Natalya Zernitskaya and Barry Snell voted in favor. Councilmember Lana Negrete voted against.
Residents near Gandara Park have organized through the website gandarapark.org, raising concerns about parking, traffic, infrastructure capacity and neighborhood character.
A proposal to increase development standards on those 89 parcels is expected to return to the Council on Tuesday, Sept. 8. No hearing date specific to the 1517 15th Street project has been announced.
