LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 3.0

[jlrobe]

Originally Posted by LAofAnaheim

Anybody want to start a petition to remove Zev Yaraslavsky from office?

I dont know about that, but a friend of mine and I are starting a petition for
1) the subway to the sea
2) the repeal of Zev's law banning tunneling

I know we use money for the stations and not the tunneling, but we need ALL the money we can get.

If you can dig up dirt on Zev, let me know. It will make my job easier .

[Quixote]

2007


From Flickr, by gsgeorge

2011


By Westsidelife

[edluva]

still a tiny skyline

[BrandonJXN]

Need to add the City West towers.

[Just-In-Cali]

Originally Posted by edluva

still a tiny skyline

Tiny compared to maybe NY or chicago...but on par with Philly, Houston, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston, and so on. It will grow...NY wasnt built in a decade...nor will LA.

[Wright Concept]

Originally Posted by edluva

still a tiny skyline

Well London, Paris and Madrid have tiny skylines too.

[LAofAnaheim]

Keep in mind though...the LA skyline does extend beyond downtown on Wilshire and Century City. No other city has a string of mid-rises for 11 miles.

[Echo Park]

Yeah, I understand you're in the business of trolling, edluva, but even that was an idiotic comment.

By the way can someone remind me what that big hole on 1st and Hill is for?

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Echo Park

By the way can someone remind me what that big hole on 1st and Hill is for?

It's the site of the proposed Federal Courthouse.

[830point35]

That tiny skyline sure is pretty. Esp. when the mountains are there.

[JDRCRASH]

^ ^ ^
Well just wait!
By 2020, the city's skyline will double from 770 to over 1500 skyscrapers!

Alright, this is getting ridiculous; why should Zev Yaroslavsky oppose every single development that is crucial to revitalizing Downtown L.A.?
LOL, I just voted to kick him out

Anyways, ABC7, NBC4, CBS2, FOX11, and CW5 ALL need better locations throughout the city.
Having news broadcasting studios that overlook the streets of a city are often successful.
Having said that, I think that ABC7 should move it's headquarters to L.A. Live.
ESPN West Coast HQ is supposed be there, so it would make sense.
Whatta guys think about that?

[edluva]

echo park:
but wasn't the point of it all to see how much the skyline will potentially grow? given that fact my comment was right on the mark wasn't it? i think it's idiotic to be self-righteous when the occasion doesn't call for it, especially when it's out of a need to be fashionable

LAofAnaheim: our array of midrise clusters is hardly contiguous. It's hardly a single "string" of midrises. more like a cluster here and there over an 11 mile stretch. There are asian cities whose entire urbanized areas consist virtually of midrises, much less a mere street's worth (which again, wilshire is not)

practicalvisionary: true, i wasn't saying there was anything wrong with it. i was making an observation based on the obviously aesthetics-oriented nature of westslidelife's wonderful pics.

[ladowntowner]

Wanna see a truly impressive mid to highrise skyline?


From Wikipedia

Look no further than São Paulo. Blew my mind the first time I saw this pic. I imagine it's pretty much the same all 360° from the point where the pic was taken. Kinda scary...

[BrandonJXN]

^ Yeah but aside from Copan (S shaped building) and the sheer number of buildings, I'm not at all impressed.

I love LA's skyline. I don't want it to Manhattanize at all. Just fill it the gaps with some nice infill here and there and I'll be happy.

[edluva]

^what's so impressive about LA's architecture? I'm not comparing the cities, but aside from a few downtown buildings, the stretch of wilshire leading to santa monica is punctuated by architecture that is no more interesting than much of Sao Paulo. In fact I'd venture to say SP has a far greater number of notable midrises, architecturally speaking, especially when considering pre-war. Architecturally speakin, LA is 99.9 percent trash with a handful of gems, the marjority of which are single fams anyhow. I do agree that skyline shouldn't be a holy grail in defining urbanism though and that infill is much preferred (though LA needs help on the latter too)

ladowntowner - to put things in perspective, our "wilshire skyline" or whatever us laforumers like to call it cannot even hang with a single one of those SP streets in your pic as far as contiguity is concerned. Please, I'd hesitate to call it an "11 mile skyline" as LAofAnaheim does. Let's be realistic. SP is roughly speaking, wilshire corridor perhaps forty-fold contiguous.

[LosAngelesBeauty]

^ LA's skyline is tiny compared to its massive population. But that's understood in our endless sprawl all the way out to Palm Springs, San Diego, and Santa Barbara. LA was never defined by its high-rises. Who cares about high-rises that exist in LA anyway when hardly any of them are in pedestrian active zones? I enjoy Old Town Pasadena more than almost any other area of LA and Old Town has pretty much NO high-rises at all. Downtown LA has some beautiful and noteworthy buildings, but unfortunately, it has arrived very late in the game of any established retail when material/labor costs are on the trend to skyrocket further up. Too bad...

[ladowntowner]

LAB,

I remember as a young child driving through downtown Pasadena (now Old Town) with my family. It was a very dingy, scary place with abandoned, crumbling buildings and homeless everywhere. Ditto downtown Long Beach, even more so. (The rise of Suburbia pretty much killed off downtowns all across North America) Both have significantly turned around and have a great (albeit, somewhat manufactured) pedestrian experience today. Given time and much, much infill with a major effort towards the pedestrian experience, downtown L.A. would outdo them both with a more "organic" feel to boot. There are many things being done in this direction - with some major missteps and squandered opportunities as well. An expanding residential base and being the regional transit hub, nascent as it is (also expanding) adds to the potential for success. Too bad, as we appear to be running out of time before we can realize the dream - I hope I'm wrong here. Downtown L.A. may have reached it's zenith back in the 20's-40's in this regard, never again to see such activation at the street level. Wish I had been there to witness it.

[RAlossi]

Hey, guys, just a tiny recap for the last few days...


State Building demo complete. Now just a dirt lot waiting for whatever shall come. Why not make this into a (temporary) park??



LAPD HQ Update on November 1. Note that construction on the second (northern) building has begun.



ImaginAsian Center (former Linda Lea Theatre) has its glass facade up. We're in the home stretch on this one now.



Medallion site being excavated. Once those mountains of dirt are gone we should start to see some foundation work.



And then the LAPD HQ project yesterday. Looks like a new floor is rising every 3-4 days. Shouldn't be long before it's topped out. Now as for that $40 million cost overrun...

[Just-In-Cali]

...(sighs) and the debate goes on. edluva makes some kind of disparaging comment about LA...we all pile on in its defence...then get back to the usual.
Great pics BTW RAlossi. ThePolice headquarters should be a spectacular structure...along the lines of the Caltrans.
As far as AGAIN comparing LA's skyline to others...be it the "clusters" or the 11 mile string...we have some very interesting architecture...unless you have a mindset that only one type of design is good...and you take ALL of your cues from the same city cliches like NY and Chicago. Sao Paulo might look that way because its the most populous in the hemisphere (11,016,703) in case you wondered.

[LosAngelesBeauty]

Originally Posted by colemonkee

Oh hell yes. I hope they restore the windows on the Herald-Examiner buiding. Thanks for posting that picture, DCB.

Regarding the second half of the Meruelo post, I'm glad to see that they're still bullish on the credit market, but I wouldn't hold your breath on any of his other towers starting anytime soon. If they do, I'll be the first to cheer loudly, though. Unless citywatch beats me to it.

With the lending market still in the dumps and a declining customer base able to afford $600 a square foot (with $700 HOA fees a month), and with oil production going south and demand from overpopulation and consumption on the rise, I would have to agree with you that I wouldn't be holding my breath. $600 a square foot today, $1000-$2000 a square foot tomorrow for a profit margin that makes the project viable to lenders, as materials and energy costs begin to skyrocket (It's close to $100 a barrel of crude sweet oil on the NYMEX).

Who can afford that? The projects won't be going thru. Too bad...