A long-planned $1.4-billion real estate development at the foot of the newly famous Sixth Street Viaduct in downtown Los Angeles is closer to getting underway after receiving approval from the city Planning Commission.

The four-building mega development known as 670 Mesquit will have apartments, offices, a hotel, a charter elementary school, shops and restaurants if the City Council signs off on the plans to replace a cold storage facility on the west side of the Los Angeles River with the mixed-use complex designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels Group.

Developer Vella Group is prepared to start work in about a year and a half and plans to complete the project by 2031, land use consultant Michael LoGrande said.

LoGrande represents Vella Group and the Gallo family, the longtime owner of the Rancho Cold Storage facility on Mesquit Street that will make way for the new development that will rise as high as 34 stories.

Plans call for 894 apartments, of which 144 will be offered at below-market rates for low-income households — a scale that would make it one of the largest residential projects to be built downtown.

The boutique hotel will have 271 rooms and should garner a four-star rating, LoGrande said.

“We’re looking to attract people from the Convention Center” who want to stay in a neighborhood that feels different from the buzzy blocks around the sports and entertainment district, LoGrande said. He added that the project aims to offer “something that’s a little more cultured with more options and vibrant pedestrian activity, which you can find in the Arts District.”

The development will be funded by United Kingdom investment firm London & Regional Properties, LoGrande said.

Earlier plans for 670 Mesquit called for a larger portion of office space for rent, but with demand for offices dipping as more people work remotely, the office component was reduced to 676,000 square feet — still a substantial amount of new space.

A rendering of the $1.4-billion mixed-use project 670 Mesquit in Los Angeles’ Arts District, which would include housing, offices, a hotel, shops and restaurants

(Bjarke Ingels Group)

“This was really an office-forward project to begin with,” LoGrande said. “We made some pretty significant design changes due to the shifting market post-COVID and increased the residential units pretty dramatically by adding 475 more homes.”

Architect Bjarke Ingels has helped design corporate campuses for Google in London and Silicon Valley, among several other high-profile projects.

“Our project draws inspiration from the scale, materials, and details of the warehouses and factories in the Arts District, aiming to preserve and integrate their architectural character,” Bjarke Ingels said in a statement about 670 Mesquit. “By blending modern amenities with timeless materials and proportions, we honor the artistic identity that defines the district.”

The design also calls for a broad deck extending over an active rail yard below that divides the Rancho property from the Los Angeles River. And there is to be a landscaped public space maintained and programmed by the owners with such events as farmers markets, movie nights and yoga classes.

The deck, rooftops and ground level public spaces will be landscaped by Studio-MLA, which is led by architect Mia Lehrer. Her other projects include the Hollywood Park racetrack redevelopment and SoFi Stadium, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the Taylor Yard G2 Park on the Los Angeles River.

A revolution is underway in California’s insurance market that could provide relief to homeowners in high-fire-risk neighborhoods who have found it difficult to find insurers to cover their homes, typically a household’s most valuable asset.

Under new rules, state insurers for the first time will be allowed to use so-called catastrophe models to help determine the cost of home insurance. The models, developed by firms such as Verisk Analytics and Moody’s, are complex computer programs that aim to better determine the risk a structure faces from wildfires amid a changing climate. Here are five things to know about the models:

How do these models work?

The programs, first developed in the 1980s because of hurricane losses and increasingly applied to wildfires, typically run thousands of possible scenarios that enable insurers to determine their potential financial exposure in a disaster. The models are proprietary but take into account many factors, including meteorological conditions, an area’s topography, the amount of brush and other nearby fuel, and a community’s building density.

When setting individual home premiums, California is requiring insurers to consider a building owner’s fire mitigation efforts, such as installing a Class A fire-rated roof, closing eaves or doing brush removal.

Will the models increase the availability of insurance?

The regulations are intended to sharply increase the availability of insurance in areas that have high fire risk as defined by Department of Insurance maps released this year, which are expected to be updated soon. Homeowners in those areas have been flocking to the FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which sells bare-bones policies. Southern California neighborhoods in those maps include ZIP Codes in Malibu, Beverly Hills and other communities in mountainous areas.

In exchange, large insurers are supposed to write policies in those neighborhoods equivalent to 85% of their statewide market share, meaning an insurer with a 10% statewide share should cover 8.5% of homes. However, critics such as Consumer Watchdog in Los Angeles say that those regulations have loopholes and that insurers have leeway to not meet that benchmark.

How will the new regulations affect my property insurance rates?

That’s a matter of debate. Catastrophe models are not specifically intended to lower rates, but insurers and the insurance department maintain that catastrophe models, by allowing insurers to more accurately calculate their risk, should allow for more gradual rate increases over time rather than requests for large one-time rate hikes, such as the 30% increase sought by State Farm in the summer.

Consumer Watchdog, however, says the models will lead to sharp rate hikes because the regulations allow insurers to keep essential details about the models under wraps despite a public review process established by the insurance department. The department disagrees and is supporting the establishment of a “public” model being developed by Cal Poly Humboldt and others that could be used in the future as a benchmark to evaluate the private models.

Will the new regulations affect me if I live in a city and not a wildfire zone?

Yes, sort of. Insurers in the state already include the risk of wildfire in their premiums, but it is based on historical claims data. Homes in neighborhoods that don’t face such a risk already pay lower rates, and that is not expected to change under the new rules. However, even homeowners in low-risk urban areas are facing rate hikes, and the department is hoping that the regulation, along with other regulatory changes — such as allowing insurers to include the cost of reinsurance in their premiums — will draw more insurers back into the market. Reinsurance is acquired by insurers from other insurers to help protect them from catastrophic losses.

When can I start seeing some relief?

The insurance department will start accepting applications from modeling companies Jan. 2 and expects that, after the public review process is completed, some could be approved in the first quarter. Insurers could then file for new rates based on those models. Those rate filings also must undergo a review that the department said could be completed for some as early as next summer, with more in 2026.

The billionaire Elon Musk and the California venture capitalist Marc Andreessen have started a debate about the role of government that we should be having — but it might not go the way they would hope. They don’t like government agencies that stop corporations like theirs from ripping off consumers.

They especially hate the 14-year-old Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But most voters in both major parties support its work.

Musk and Andreessen recently made their case publicly. “Delete CFPB,” was Musk’s pithy policy position on X. Andreessen spun a conspiratorial tale on “The Joe Rogan Show” about how Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) uses the bureau to take away the bank accounts — “debank” — of anyone who doesn’t agree with her, especially Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Attacks by the two men resemble what Wall Street banks and predatory lenders have said since before the bureau came into existence in 2010. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon tried to strangle it in the crib during the congressional debate over its creation and now audaciously paints his $4-trillion, very profitable bank as a victim of regulation. Payday lenders took a case to the Supreme Court in an attempt to defund the agency (they lost). Most financial institutions belong to lobby groups that have sought to eviscerate the bureau.

These industries dislike the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau intensely because, bluntly, it does its job. Congress gave the bureau enforcement powers to stand up for consumers, and companies run or influenced by Musk and Andreessen have been on the receiving end. In one example from 2016, the agency sued a startup backed by Andreessen, Oakland-based LendUp, after it flouted federal law. Ultimately the bureau shut the company down in 2021 following repeated violations that included changing the terms of existing loans.

Andreessen is also an investor in San Francisco-based Synapse, a bank-like company that wiped out people’s life savings, as reported last month. No charges have been filed — yet.

PayPal, with which Musk was closely involved, has also faced sanction by the bureau.

Tech moguls might hold a grudge when justice is done, but the 118,101 LendUp customers who received more than $40 million of their money back thanks to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau surely feel differently. Those people are not alone.

Since its creation, the agency has recovered more than $21 billion in restitution and canceled debts for tens of millions of consumers. Recently, in just one week, the bureau returned $1.8 billion to 4 million consumers who had been scammed by a group of credit repair companies scattered across the western United States. Bureau-created protections barring unfair fees, charges and terms for financial products have saved billions more.

So yes, Andreessen might have felt a little salty after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shuttered LendUp. And yes, companies that defraud clients are justifiably more likely to be shut down or “debanked,” if Andreessen wants to use that term. But the bureau also stands up for consumers who actually are debanked, like people who are suddenly cut off from their accounts because of race or ethnicity.

Not every case involves, as with “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler, a call to the cops for banking while Black. The bureau works the much more insidious cases, like when companies systematically close accounts for discriminatory reasons, with no outward evidence of misdeeds. In fact, after the agency received numerous complaints about account closures and freezes, it created a rule — which will go into effect soon — to oversee digital payment apps and stop illegal debanking.

Indeed, the bureau’s director, Rohit Chopra, has explicitly called for a banking system that does not penalize identity or speech. On the podcast Organized Money, Chopra recently said: “We have to do more to stop debanking and make sure that people really have a right for all of their law-abiding activities to freely flow through the banking system.”

Musk’s attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hinges on his new role as one of President-elect Donald Trump’s go-to guys for shrinking government. In theory, that agenda appeals to an anti-bureaucratic, libertarian strain in American politics — a sentiment that has ebbed considerably since its high point in the Reagan years, given what Americans have learned from the savings-and-loan debacle, the predatory practices of credit card companies, payday lenders, and of course, the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession. Voters like government agencies that work well and work for them. There’s a reason proposals to change Social Security are known as the third rail of American politics; the public relies on this program just as we rely on consumer protection rules.

My organization has researched what voters think of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mission and found support among Republicans, independents and Democrats. Standing up to Wall Street and predatory lenders and wrangling back ill-gotten gains on behalf of the little people is very popular. Other surveys confirm this finding.

In the coming months and years, the new president, his appointees and congressional Republicans are likely to try to kneecap a government institution that has done remarkable things for millions of families.

Musk and Andreessen are the leading edge of a false populism that hides an agenda that will unfold over the next four years designed to benefit the wealthy at everyone else’s expense. They can launch a campaign against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but they can’t change the facts or draw the battle lines: On one side are a handful of Wall Street bankers, payday lenders and Silicon Valley billionaires, who make money by breaking the rules. On the other side are the vast majority of Americans, who benefit from and value the bureau’s crucial work — but don’t have a billionaire’s megaphone.

Christine Chen Zinner is senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform.