Many Valley Village residents were sorry to see Steven’s Nursery and Hardware on Riverside Drive close in 2006 after 65 years of business. But locals will soon have new neighbors join the community when two apartment buildings open on the site this year.

The smaller of the two new buildings will be on Kling Street and will open in April. It will include 48 units and 96 underground parking spaces, a foreman on the site said.

A 96-unit building on Riverside Drive just east of Gelson's Market is expected to open at the end of the year. It is advertised as a luxury complex and features a courtyard, swimming pool and 240 underground parking spaces.

“You always worry how it will look and fit into the community,” said Tony Braswell, president of the Neighborhood Council Valley Village. But when the project first came before the council, the original builder addressed concerns including traffic, landscaping and exteriors, Braswell said.

Due to the economy, the property changed hands at least once, Braswell said. The new builder is IMT Residential, based in Sherman Oaks with properties throughout the United States. City Planner Tom Glick said the Riverside Drive project did not undergo major revisions when it was sold to IMT.

Though many residents balked at the original plans to change the property from a smaller business to a larger project, the new development is “much less damaging than it could have been,” Braswell said.

While people tend to have concerns about the environmental impact of new construction and its affect on traffic, schools and city services, “there is an argument for densification,” said Paul Habibi, professor of real estate at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and an investor/developer.

“It provides smart growth, creating communities that are not sprawling outward” Habibi said. “There is an economic benefit to the community … it helps businesses thrive."

People living in the immediate area have spent more than a year dealing with the effects of the massive construction project. Mary Valentine is the co-manager of Melinda Manor apartments, which are adjacent to the new Kling Street building. She said the developer has been as courteous as can be expected on a construction site.

“When it gets too noisy, I call him and he takes care of it,” Valentine said of her contact with a company representative.

The project has not had a big effect on her ability to rent units or retain existing renters. “My tenants, some of them have complained,” Valentine said. “but I’ve never heard quiet construction.”

The rental market has just started to stabilize in the past year, Habibi said. “The previous four to five years were affected by economic conditions; high vacancy rates forced many landlords to offer incentives to potential renters.

“Multifamily housing has ironically become a beneficiary of these tumultuous times” Habibi said. There was “such a mess in the mortgage market” that many people who might have bought homes remained renters.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story quoted Paul Habibi as saying “there is an argument for gentrification,” when he actually said "densification."