$2 billion project in the works
By Toi Creel
Driving along the 405 freeway in Westchester, a group of buildings may have caught your eye. The four tower cranes are the beginnings of a $2-billion dollar rental car facility.
The project is called the Consolidated Rental Car Facility or CONRAC. Construction first started in 2019 and its designed to make car rental easier, combining all the LAX car rental lots under one roof.
It’s both a private and public venture by three entities: the City of Los Angeles, PCL Investments USA, LLC. and Fengate Capital Management Ltd.
A website for the project gives some details about the facility. It’s a 6.4-million-square-foot complex and will hold around 18,000 cars.
“The ConRAC facility will provide direct connection to LAX’s Automated People Mover (APM) train system. With this direct connection, rental car shuttles will no longer be needed to shuttle customers to and from the Central Terminal Area (CTA), which will result in the elimination of more than 3,200 daily rental car shuttle trips on the surrounding streets and into and out of the CTA,” the website states.
The CONRAC building will hold some historical significance. According to UrbanizeLA, it’s being built on what was once the Manchester Square community. Originally developed in the 1940s, the neighborhood’s population decreased in the late 1990s, when Los Angeles World Airports buying out homeowners as part of a plan to redevelop the site for LAX uses.
Construction for the building began last year and is expected to conclude and be open to the public in 2023.
