Implosion Clears Site for $175M Condos

(To read more on the multifamily market, click here.)

SAN PEDRO, CA-Developer Raffi Cohen’s Beverly Hills-based Galaxy Commercial Holdings has imploded the 12-story former Pacific Trade Center building to make way for a 16-story, 318-unit project called Vue. It will be San Pedro’s first high-rise condo development. Galaxy collapsed the 40-year-old, 122,000-sf Pacific Trade Center office building Sunday morning amid cheers from onlookers at the waterfront site where the developer is building the $175-million Vue project.

A Galaxy spokesman tells GlobeSt.com that the developer imploded the building because the Pacific Trade Center had been built in a way that rendered it difficult if not impossible to dismantle the building floor-by-floor. The Vue, named for its views of the waterfront and Palos Verdes Peninsula, is slated to break ground in fall of this year, with the units expected to be available for occupancy in early 2008. It is a development of Galaxy and the Carlyle Group.