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View Winners → Old Phone Company Building in Monrovia May Get New Life
Monrovia Weekly Feb 28, 2019
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Chi estimates that the project will be ready for presentation to the Design Review Committee (DRC) by May of this year. – Courtesy rendering / City of Monrovia
By Susan Motander
The brick building whose side faces the Monrovia Library may have a new use. Once the General Telephone, then Pacific Bell building, then Verizon, now Frontier Communications Building, the many named facility may be facing a totally new use: self-storage. According to City Manager Oliver Chi, the city has been working with Overton Moore Pacific (OMP) on plans for converting the office building into a mixed-use self-storage facility.
Although original plans under discussion proposed a residential project, a different concept has evolved. The current proposal calls for 550 self-storage units on the upper floors (86,389 square feet) with 4,470 square feet on the ground level being used for retail or commercial space and an additional 1,247 square feet dedicated on that first level to office space.
Community Development Director Craig Jimenez said that this plan would not negatively impact the parking situation. “If this building had been converting into an office building, that would have had a negative effect on our parking situation,” he said. “As it is, this project will not affect it much.”
Chi estimates that the project will be ready for presentation to the Design Review Committee (DRC) by May of this year. That is a major step in the entitlement process for a project. All such projects must first pass the DRC before being presented to the Planning Commission or City Council.
