The downtown construction site of developer Geoff Palmer’s Da Vinci apartment complex—and two nearby buildings—caught on fire early Monday morning. Much of the Da Vinci structure on Fremont Avenue was destroyed, according to an early report, and arson investigators were called to the scene, although an official cause of the blaze has not yet been determined.
This isn’t the complex’s first time in the news. In our December issue, writer Marc Haefele profiles Geoff Palmer, examining his vision and his “$3 billion concern,” a collection of downtown properties that have been widely criticized. Here is Haefele’s story:
You’d be forgiven for wanting to reach out the passenger window of your car and touch the Da Vinci, the newest downtown apartment complex from G.H. Palmer Associates. Built dead against the transition from the 110 to the 101 and opening early next year, it is massive in scale, with medieval brick buttresses surmounted by Italianate dingbats. The Da Vinci is unlike any other developer’s apartment building downtown, though it is nearly identical to the Orsini, a 2011 structure across the street, and for that matter, the Piero, the Visconti, and the Medici—all Palmer projects that dominate the one-and-a-half-mile stretch of the Harbor Freeway between 8th Street and Sunset.