A landmarked downtown Los Angeles apartment building designed by famed Los Angeles architect John Parkinson is on the market as its owners face foreclosure.
Residences in the Metropolitan, a 10-story tower built in 1913, are nearly filled with tenants but its ground floor retail spaces on Broadway and 5th Street are unoccupied, as are other street-level stores in downtown’s Historic Core.
The historic building was once considered one of the best in the city and is owned by the Fallas family, which operated a chain of value-priced clothing stores based in Gardena including one called Fallas Paredes in the Metropolitan.
Around 2011, Michael Fallas, who once worked in family’s downtown store as a stock boy, converted the upstairs floors from offices to apartments while continuing to operate Fallas Paredes. The store closed more than five years ago in the wake of a 2018 filing by its parent company for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection…