LOS ANGELES | METRO Project Rundown 2.0 (non-downtown)

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by caligrad

^^^ I agree. I didn't realize how many Museums LA had until i had family in from out of town. The Lucas coming on board soon is going to be amazing.

The Huntington Library is a great place to take visitors from out of town for a full day at the museum. It gets overshadowed by its more famous neighbors. Exposition Park is going to be an amazing full-day museum experience too with the Lucas museum and the new space shuttle display at the Samuel Oshin Air and Space Center.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by badrunner

The Huntington Library is a great place to take visitors from out of town for a full day at the museum. It gets overshadowed by its more famous neighbors. Exposition Park is going to be an amazing full-day museum experience too with the Lucas museum and the new space shuttle display at the Samuel Oshin Air and Space Center.

Plus the California African American Museum and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (dinosaurs!).

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by LAisthePlace

Saw it in person today (while catching the excellent Ed Ruscha exhibit) and it looks phenomenal.

Grand, monumental, almost prehistoric, and blending well with La Brea Tar Pits, recent Renzo Piano Buildings (BCAM and the Academy Museum), the Pavillion for Japanese art and the rest of Hancock Park.

I think a lot of people are going to eat crow when it is said and done.

Will be even better when all the scaffolding and fencing are down and it will be imho, one of the best museum campuses in the country.

I'm looking forward to it. The last time I drove by there I remember thinking that all the instagrammers and tiktokers milling around the Urban Light installation probably don't even bother stepping foot inside of LACMA. I think the redesign will change all that. It re-orients the building to the west and there will be a new public plaza integrating Urban Light and other art displays. There should be a good amount of foot traffic there with people wandering inside for impromptu museum visits.

[SoCalKid]

Originally Posted by hughfb3

That site which you speak of is the tunnel boring machine launch site for the phase 2. I do wonder what will become of this space once Metro is done with it, maybe a residential tower??

It is one of the sites that Metro has listed for a future RFP for housing and a minimum percentage of affordable housing. My guess is that in this location, the winning bid will in fact be for a tower. It's one of the few locations in the region where high rise residential pencils right now.

Metro also typically requires prevailing wage labor (translation - extremely expensive construction) which significantly increases the cost of podium development but only moderately increases the cost of high rise (which generally already uses very high cost labor). That, combined with the very high rents in this area, will likely push most submissions towards a high rise. Note this dynamic won't work in other parts of the City - if it's not in an extremely high-rent area, nothing will get built with private capital with the prevailing wage requirement.

[SoCalKid]

Originally Posted by LAisthePlace

Saw it in person today (while catching the excellent Ed Ruscha exhibit) and it looks phenomenal.

Grand, monumental, almost prehistoric, and blending well with La Brea Tar Pits, recent Renzo Piano Buildings (BCAM and the Academy Museum), the Pavillion for Japanese art and the rest of Hancock Park.

I think a lot of people are going to eat crow when it is said and done.

Will be even better when all the scaffolding and fencing are down and it will be imho, one of the best museum campuses in the country.

I saw it in person a few weeks back and agree it was better in person than in pictures. I'm not as positive as you on it, but I liked it and thought it was a good addition. I was skeptical of it crossing Wilshire at first, but in person I thought it created a cool "terminal building" effect when looking east from Urban Lights or the Metro station area. By that I mean when you looked down the street, it looked like the street was a dead end with the building at the end of the street (of course the street actually goes under the building). And if I recall correctly that's a part of the building with curved glass.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by LAsam

Then there's the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Can't forget that one!

I love that place. Only been to it once, though.

There's also the Wende Museum in Culver City, which is a museum that contains art and artifacts from the Cold War, many from the former Eastern Bloc. I've only been to that place once too, but I thought it was cool that they had a Trabant on display, and other things.

[caligrad]

Originally Posted by badrunner

The Huntington Library is a great place to take visitors from out of town for a full day at the museum. It gets overshadowed by its more famous neighbors. Exposition Park is going to be an amazing full-day museum experience too with the Lucas museum and the new space shuttle display at the Samuel Oshin Air and Space Center.

I've been here most of my life and have yet to find someone to go with me to the Huntington Library unfortunately.

Originally Posted by craigs

Plus the California African American Museum and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (dinosaurs!).

Yeah, I took them there, another one where i had no idea LA had Dino Bones on Display. Shocked. Also, a very underrated building on the inside. I wonder how the city is going to clean up the area around Exposition Park for the Olympics.

[colemonkee]

What's great about this conversation about museums around Los Angeles is that we have 3 major institutional museum buildings under construction at once: LACMA's replacement, the Lucas Museum, and the new Space Shuttle building at the Science Center. Can we think of a time when that was the case? I can't at least from recent memory.

[SoCalKid]

Originally Posted by colemonkee

What's great about this conversation about museums around Los Angeles is that we have 3 major institutional museum buildings under construction at once: LACMA's replacement, the Lucas Museum, and the new Space Shuttle building at the Science Center. Can we think of a time when that was the case? I can't at least from recent memory.

Not to mention the Natural History Museum's expansion (much smaller than LACMA and Lucas of course), the planned Broad expansion (the Broad itself almost belongs on this list, it's pretty recent!), the planned La Brea Tar Pits and Museum reimagination, and the recently completed Academy Museum. Not exactly a museum, but Exposition Park's renovations will enhance the museum environment over there. We'll soon have two incredible campuses - the revamped Expo Park and LACMA + the Academy Museum + revamped Tar Pits. Pretty cool!

LA's civic scene has really come into its own in the last decade or two and has now stepped into the Global City tier in that regard.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by caligrad

I've been here most of my life and have yet to find someone to go with me to the Huntington Library unfortunately.

Just go by yourself! Why wait for someone to go with you? The gardens are beautiful.

Originally Posted by caligrad

Yeah, I took them there, another one where i had no idea LA had Dino Bones on Display. Shocked.

Really?? When I was in 1st grade, we took a field trip to the Natural History Museum. I thought every kid who grew up in the Los Angeles area went to the Natural History Museum at least once or twice in their childhood.

[caligrad]

^^^ Unfortunately I was in the LB School District. Our field trips mostly consisted of LB area museums. There are some great one but for a city the size of LB, it doesn't have any big museums, mostly are all tiny if I'm being honest. The city could benefit from a big museum or 2. The area where Angel Stadium was being threatened to go/ where the Olympic events are being held would be a great spot to put an exposition park type museum row. But I'm sure that area being technically below sea level is a nonstarter.

[colemonkee]

caligrad, I lived in LA nearly 25 years before I made it to the Huntington Gardens. But I can attest to sopas_ej and everyone else who mentioned it: they are well worth the trip and holds up to similar botanical gardens I've been to in Europe. Truly a gem of our region that's under the radar most of the time.

[plinko]

The new CAA tower is definitely starting to make an impact on the Century City skyline. It's only about halfway up!


240831-0902 NEWPORT BEACH 369 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr


240831-0902 NEWPORT BEACH 373 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr


240831-0902 NEWPORT BEACH 390 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr


240831-0902 NEWPORT BEACH 391 by Michael Stroh, on Flickr

[craigs]

CMNTY Culture considers residential towers at 6767 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood

Miami-style residential skyscrapers are new alternative for proposed development at Sunset and Highland

Steven Sharp
Uranize Los Angeles
September 5, 2024



When announced in 2022, the CMNTY Culture campus was slated to reshape the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Highland Avenue in Hollywood with a mix of production space and offices. Two years later, with a glut of empty office space plaguing the Los Angeles area,
the projects backers are considering building a predominantly residential development, according to new plans unearthed by ATC.

The project at 6767 W. Sunset Boulevard, was unveiled as a pair of attached, mid-rise buildings featuring more than 400,000 square feet of offices. Plans submitted to the Planning Department in August describe the project as now consisting of 34- and 38-story buildings
featuring a combined 743 dwelling units above a five-level, 834-car podium garage.



At street level, approximately 10,500 square feet of retail and restaurant space would line Sunset and Highland. Additionally, the project would retain a core element of the original plan: a more than 10,000-square-foot recording studio at the northwest corner of the project
site along Selma Avenue. However, a planned performance venue with 500 seats no longer appears in plans.
. . . .

[Quixote]

^ Yes, please! While I appreciated how the previous proposal's design added some visual interest to the corner, I'd much rather have the housing and height. Having an additional 1,000+ residents within a 5-minute walking distance of the Hollywood/Highland station is great, and having two 32-story towers offsets the sprawling Hollywood High School across the street.

[caligrad]

How about cutting back on the parking a few spaces and masking the podium with 100s of studios ? Not against the developer or the design, i actually think its good, i just wish the city would get rid of all of their affordable housing requirements/rules and instead tell developers to add 100s of studios to their projects as a requirement. aka mask the podium with studios. Only because if housing demand ever decreases (probably won't in our lifetime) then those studios can easily be converted to offices and etc.

[SoCalKid]

Originally Posted by caligrad

How about cutting back on the parking a few spaces and masking the podium with 100s of studios ? Not against the developer or the design, i actually think its good, i just wish the city would get rid of all of their affordable housing requirements/rules and instead tell developers to add 100s of studios to their projects as a requirement. aka mask the podium with studios. Only because if housing demand ever decreases (probably won't in our lifetime) then those studios can easily be converted to offices and etc.

The city is moving towards requirements of "active space" screening of parking on the 2-3 levels and has done that in some new specific plans. That means you need to put commercial or residential space in front of parking. I think that will become the norm. From an urban design perspective I think that's nice, but it does increase cost and make projects less feasible - the space in front of the garage is not efficient. I would rather just require a continuation of the facade so that the garage looks the same as the rest of the building.

[Radio5]

Originally Posted by plinko

The new CAA tower is definitely starting to make an impact on the Century City skyline. It's only about halfway up!


Flickr

This with the One Beverly towers will be a pretty impressive skyline

[caligrad]

Originally Posted by SoCalKid

The city is moving towards requirements of "active space" screening of parking on the 2-3 levels and has done that in some new specific plans. That means you need to put commercial or residential space in front of parking. I think that will become the norm. From an urban design perspective I think that's nice, but it does increase cost and make projects less feasible - the space in front of the garage is not efficient. I would rather just require a continuation of the facade so that the garage looks the same as the rest of the building.

I always figured parking in some instances were lost income. Yeah, it would cost more to build 100s of studios, but the income from those studios would make up for it whereas a parking spot is less income since its already attached to a unit, in regard to residential units.

[SoCalKid]

Originally Posted by caligrad

I always figured parking in some instances were lost income. Yeah, it would cost more to build 100s of studios, but the income from those studios would make up for it whereas a parking spot is less income since its already attached to a unit, in regard to residential units.

I get your thinking, but it doesn't actually pencil that way. First of all, to get the rents you need to make these high rises pencil (we're talking $6+/sf), you typically need to offer 1 parking space per bedroom. So you can't just reduce parking and think all you're doing is losing parking revenue, you're also losing the ability to rent your units at the rents you need. Second, those liner units are more expensive than regular units to build, so the income from them doesn't necessarily make up for the cost.