Palms Movers

Getting to Know Palms

How Palms Sits

Palms is a neighborhood of the City of Los Angeles, on the Westside, just north of Culver City. Because it is part of the city, a move here follows city rules through the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, rather than a separate city hall or the county. The neighborhood is small, under two square miles, but it holds more than 42,000 residents. That gives it one of the highest population densities in Los Angeles County and the highest on the Westside.

Palms has no official boundaries, but it sits northwest of Culver City, south of Cheviot Hills and Beverlywood, southeast of Rancho Park, west of Mid-City, and northeast of Mar Vista. Venice Boulevard, Overland Avenue, Motor Avenue, National Boulevard, and Robertson Boulevard are among the main routes. The Metro E Line light rail stops at the Palms station, and the 10 Freeway runs along the northern edge. UCLA sits about five miles north, and the offices and studios of Culver City are right next door.

The housing is overwhelmingly apartments. After decades of single-family homes, the flatlands were rezoned for multifamily housing. Most of the district is filled in with two-story and larger apartment buildings, with newer mixed-use projects rising along the commercial corridors. Roughly nine in ten residents rent, and the average household is small. The population is young and notably diverse, with significant White, Latino, Asian, and African American communities. A quiet pocket of owner-occupied single-family homes remains in the Westside Village area in the northwest corner.

From The Palms to the Westside

In Spanish and Mexican days, the land was part of Rancho La Ballona. In 1819, the Machado and Talamantes families held grazing rights to thousands of acres and ran cattle and sheep across the open valley. A school went up in 1865, and a general store followed in 1871 at what is now Washington Boulevard and Overland Avenue. The area was still known as Ballona then.

The railroad changed everything. When a rail line reached the valley, a land rush followed. In 1886, the speculators Joseph Curtis, Edward Sweetser, and C.J. Harrison bought 500 acres, named the tract “The Palms,” and planted five thousand palm trees along eight miles of street. They marketed it as an agricultural and vacation community on a steam railroad line, halfway between downtown and the beach. A lively town grew up around the depot. At the time, the name covered far more than today’s neighborhood, reaching across land that would later become Rancho Park and Mar Vista.

As Los Angeles spread west, it enfolded the little town. Palms was annexed to the City of Los Angeles in 1915, making it the oldest neighborhood ever added to the city. After World War II, subdivisions brought young families. Then, under pressure to add housing, the city rezoned most of the flatlands for apartments. Over the following decades, the original Craftsman and Spanish Colonial houses were largely replaced with apartment buildings. Palms became the dense, young, renter-filled neighborhood it is today, still growing upward along Overland and Motor.

What a Palms Move Really Involves

Palms is part of the City of Los Angeles, so a move here works under LADOT rather than a separate city or the county. For larger moves, LADOT issues temporary no-parking permits that hold curb space at the address, and our office arranges and posts these in advance. In a neighborhood this dense, that permit is often the difference between parking at the door and carrying from down the block, so we file for it early on the busiest streets.

The buildings are the heart of the work. Most Palms moves are apartment moves. That means elevator reservations, certificate of insurance filings, building move-in windows, and stair carries in the older walk-ups that have no elevator. We handle the building paperwork and the booking with management ahead of time. We plan the carry from the loading point to the unit. The newer mixed-use buildings along the corridors have their own loading docks and rules, which we confirm before the day.

The density is the other factor. Streets are tight, parking turns over fast, and construction is often underway along Overland, Motor, and Venice. There may be little room to leave a truck. We size the truck to the street rather than the load alone, secure the permit and the elevator, and confirm the access before move day. Nothing slows the job once the crew arrives. The single-family homes in Westside Village are more straightforward, and we plan those around the driveway and the street.