Los Angeles is beginning to test what electric air travel looks like when it intersects with real estate.
Property investment firm Reuben Brothers and Joby Aviation plan to set up an air taxi vertiport, a facility that caters to lower-noise electric vehicles, atop a luxury residential building in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Century City. Joby expects to create the vertiport by converting a helipad atop Park Elm Residences at Century Plaza’s South Tower for take-offs and landings.
The service would let Park Elm residents book Joby flights within greater Los Angeles, where some drives that stretch beyond two hours could be made in as little as five minutes.
The plans point "to a future where expanded vertiport access across Los Angeles transforms everyday convenience,” Jordana Yechiel, director of residential design for Reuben Brothers, said in a statement.
The deal is the latest example of air taxi companies stitching together real estate — rooftops, lounges, airports and parking lots — to create the nation's first version of an aerial transit network. That real estate is crucial before commercial flights take off in earnest, according to Joby and competitors including Archer Aviation and Boeing-owned Wisk Aero.
Air taxi operators still face headwinds from lengthy Federal Aviation Administration approvals and high real estate and operational costs. These companies will also need to win over consumers concerned about safety and pricing, with NASA estimating air taxi costs at $6 to $11 per mile.
Joby is leveraging partnerships to turn its innovation into a reality; it is now working with the federal Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing, or eVTOL, Integration Pilot Program to begin early operations this year in 12 states.
Scaling up nationally
For Joby, the deal with Reuben Brothers is one of several partnerships the firm is using to roll out air taxi service nationwide.
Just this week, Joby finished a 10-day flight campaign in New York for its electric air taxis between John F. Kennedy International Airport and Manhattan heliports, offering a real-world preview of how it plans to turn some of the region’s longest commutes into flights measured in minutes.
As a result, New York officials are working with air taxi infrastructure companies to upgrade the city's heliports in anticipation of the launch of commercial service. But unlike Los Angeles, the New York vertiports are on land instead of atop residential buildings.
“We operate some of the busiest airports in the world, and with that comes a responsibility to think seriously about what aviation looks like in the decades ahead,” said New York Port Authority Executive Director Kathryn Garcia.
Joby has conducted similar test flights in California's Bay Area; last month, an air taxi flew from Oakland International Airport across the Bay toward the Golden Gate Bridge and turned above the Marin Headlands, showing off its capabilities to onlookers below.
Meanwhile, Joby is working with Delta Air Lines to retrofit U.S. heliports into electric charger-equipped vertiports, or operational hubs for air taxis.
Joby’s Los Angeles push is also taking shape through a series of partnerships. Central to that strategy is its 2025 acquisition of the passenger business of Blade Air Mobility, a New York-based company that operates short-distance helicopter flights and airport transfers and has built out a network of passenger lounges.
The Century City vertiport would include a dedicated passenger lounge similar to those Blade operates near heliports and airports in markets such as Manhattan.
The Century City tower "is ideally positioned to anchor a broader Los Angeles vertiport network," said a statement from Rob Wiesenthal, CEO of Joby's Blade Air Mobility division. "We expect this network to completely reshape how residents move through the city, beginning with airport trips."
For the broader eVTOL industry, the project adds to a growing Los Angeles real estate land gathering that already includes Archer Aviation’s planned Hawthorne airport hub, Skyports’ hunt for vertiport sites and Metropolis Technologies’ plan with Joby to convert parking facilities into air taxi real estate.
Outside of Los Angeles, Joby in January purchased a manufacturing facility in Vandalia, Ohio, near where the Wright brothers built the first powered airplane.
Century City hub
Century City could serve as an example of an early air taxi centrally located site because it already functions like a high-rise neighborhood.
The neighborhood has high-rise offices, luxury condos, hotels, high-end companies, one of the county's top-performing malls and direct proximity to some of the area's wealthiest residential pockets. It is also close enough to LAX to make the airport-transfer use case easy to understand.
A ride from Century City to LAX can be quick on paper and punishing in practice due to traffic. That is the kind of trip air taxi companies want to use as their opening argument: short enough to fly efficiently, painful enough by car to make a premium alternative feel plausible.
Park Elm Residences at Century Plaza traces its roots to the $2.5 billion redevelopment of the iconic Century Plaza campus, where developers replaced aging office uses with a mixed-use complex anchored by a renovated hotel and two new residential towers that were completed in 2022 and opened to residents in late 2023.
The twin 44-story towers — designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners — contain about 268 luxury condominium residences ranging from one- to four-bedroom units.
Sales have rolled out in phases, with early listings beginning around the time of the project’s completion and units hitting the market from roughly the mid-$2 million range to more than $20 million, depending on size and view.
If Joby can turn a residential helipad into a functioning vertiport, Century City could become a test case for how luxury towers, airports and entertainment districts plug into the same aerial network.