LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 4.0

[pesto]

Originally Posted by alki

Except that's a big difference.....a very big difference. More people take mass transit in NY because the distances are more compact and because mass transit was an important part of NYC's planning and development. And the distance from DTLA to Santa Monica is much larger than the distance between lower Manhattan to Midtown. I have walked it. I would never try to walk from DT to SM.

In fact, the entire island of Manhattan is 13 miles long......with midtown in the lower middle of the island......so about 6 miles or less from downtown. The distance from DTLA to SM is more than 16 miles.......longer than the entire island of Manhattan.

Frankly, I don't see the comparison.

Well, as they say, all metaphors limp.

The main analogy is that Manhattan is not one 2 sq. mile area; it is extended over about 10 miles from Battery to Columbia, 12 miles to Yankee Stadium. Similarly, LA is about 12 miles from DT to SM. The shopping, civic and commercial districts; sporting, entertainment, museums, dining, nightlife, etc., are spread from one end to the other (although tending to concentrate in Wall St., SoHo, Greenwich Village, Times Sq., Midtown, and the areas around Central Park up to about 80th.

The analogy to DT, Wilshire, Hollywood, BH, Beverly Center, CC, Westwood, WLA and SM are farily obvious. No one of these is a great urban center but together they form a truly great urban center in NY's case, and a developing worldclass center in LA's case.

Again, it reverts to the idea of a single city with various districts, not squabbling cities with irreconcilable interests.

[sings twin]

Found this excellent live cam of 901 West Olympic (The new Marriott).

Really looks like they are getting on with it.

http://marriott2lalive.com/view/viewer_index.shtml?id=1444http://marriott2lalive.com/view/viewer_index.shtml?id=1444

[colemonkee]

Great find! Perfect birds eye view of the construction, which, if you look at the shadows on the west side, it appears they've already started digging, which mean shoring must be complete on that side. Though I don't see the shoring rig anymore...

[colemonkee]

From the Los Angeles Business Journal. Here's hoping the $6 million for Related's "Grand Ave. Project" helps get the apartment tower under way in August.


Endangered CRA Projects Get Some Funding
By JACQUELYN RYAN
Friday, June 1, 2012

Several hundred projects in the city of Los Angeles halted by the death of redevelopment agencies will move forward anyway, apparently giving them a reprieve, at least for now.

The state’s Department of Finance, which is deciding the fate of thousands of such development projects across California, has approved $318 million in payments to the city through the end of the year.

Among the prominent projects receiving money is the proposed CleanTech Manufacturing site downtown, slated to receive at least $13 million; a Grand Avenue mixed-use project by Related Cos., which will receive $6 million; and billionaire Eli Broad’s planned Grand Avenue art museum, which will receive $8 million.

Read the rest of the article here.

[LosAngelesBeauty]

Originally Posted by alki

.

The Westside is a post WW II phenomenon.........before the war, DT was the center of the metro area. Yes, there was the Miracle Mile and Hollywood but they were only subcenters to DT.

As for the Westside I don't hate it but its an amorphous blob that is more suburban than urban and doesn't have much concentrated vitality. Its the weakest form of city. As for DTLA never matching the Westside in importance........never is a very long time. I wouldn't be so sure.

But if Angelenos want a Vancouver which is becoming one of the most vapid cities in Canada, then that's your choice. I just would be careful what you wish for.



The residential areas of the Westside were developed before WW II. Most of the commercial development occurred after WW II. That's when the Westside took away DT's crown.

I think you nailed it with this one alki. "Never" is a very long time. The Westside is pretty vapid and boring. Been there done that. Used to hang out there all the time. Even tried walking many times to experience the "urban vibe." Always disappointed. Downtown LA has the architecture, the history, the commercial 4-D urban built environment that does NOT exist on the Westside in any substantial form. Maybe Westwood/UCLA and Santa Monica. But it's really just peanuts compared to the size and scope of Downtown LA.

Urbanism is about synergy. Downtown LA is gaining synergy in spades that the Westside can never achieve. There's that word again. But in this case, unless you blow it up and start from scratch, "never" is actually true.

[LosAngelesBeauty]

Originally Posted by pesto

Well, as they say, all metaphors limp.

The main analogy is that Manhattan is not one 2 sq. mile area; it is extended over about 10 miles from Battery to Columbia, 12 miles to Yankee Stadium. Similarly, LA is about 12 miles from DT to SM. The shopping, civic and commercial districts; sporting, entertainment, museums, dining, nightlife, etc., are spread from one end to the other (although tending to concentrate in Wall St., SoHo, Greenwich Village, Times Sq., Midtown, and the areas around Central Park up to about 80th.

The analogy to DT, Wilshire, Hollywood, BH, Beverly Center, CC, Westwood, WLA and SM are farily obvious. No one of these is a great urban center but together they form a truly great urban center in NY's case, and a developing worldclass center in LA's case.

Again, it reverts to the idea of a single city with various districts, not squabbling cities with irreconcilable interests.

Urbanism is about synergy and Manhattan has it down like a pro. All those areas you mentioned are connected seamlessly together and feed off of each other's energy creating something where the whole (being Manhattan) is greater than the sum of its parts.

LA, on the other hand, sure it's got a lot of neighborhoods as well, but because they are separated from each other by vast distances of suburban style developments--separating commercial streets and nodes far from each other with homogeneous residential areas--the synergy that could have been created is lost. It just isn't the same going from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills as it is going from East Village to Hells Kitchen. With Manhattan, it is CONTIGUOUSLY urban throughout its built environment. In fact, you could walk pretty much the entire length of Manhattan (or at least from Midtown to Downtown). In LA, esp the Westside, you can't walk 2 blocks usually without feeling odd. Try walking from the Beverly Center to SLS along La Cienega and you know what I mean. Granted, 8500 Burton will help, a little. LA is NOT a contiguous urban city. These nodes are too spread out and it will always be a hassle to travel between them. Obviously transit will help tie things together, but thank goodness there is a large downtown urban area which gives you a much BIGGER urban fix than any of the other nodes in LA.

Downtown LA is the ONLY place in LA that can offer a semblance of urbanism at its best because it is contiguously urban throughout its entire core. Commercial 4-D (4 directional - north, east, south, and west) instead of 2-D (or linear) like most of LA such as La Cienega, La Brea, Wilshire, etc.

That allows all of Downtown LA's future neighborhoods to continue to mature and then eventually meld together seamlessly, creating synergy that begins to form a powerful urban center where the whole (being Downtown LA) is greater than the sum of its parts (South Park, FiDi, Bunker Hill, Civic Center, Little Tokyo, Historic Core, Chinatown, Fashion District, City West, El Pueblo, Arts District, etc.).

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by colemonkee

From the Los Angeles Business Journal. Here's hoping the $6 million for Related's "Grand Ave. Project" helps get the apartment tower under way in August.


Endangered CRA Projects Get Some Funding
By JACQUELYN RYAN
Friday, June 1, 2012

Several hundred projects in the city of Los Angeles halted by the death of redevelopment agencies will move forward anyway, apparently giving them a reprieve, at least for now.

The state’s Department of Finance, which is deciding the fate of thousands of such development projects across California, has approved $318 million in payments to the city through the end of the year.

Among the prominent projects receiving money is the proposed CleanTech Manufacturing site downtown, slated to receive at least $13 million; a Grand Avenue mixed-use project by Related Cos., which will receive $6 million; and billionaire Eli Broad’s planned Grand Avenue art museum, which will receive $8 million.

Read the rest of the article here.

nice find Colemonkee! this is great news for downtown as all three projects mentioned are located in our hood. hopefully the MyFigueroa project got some of the money as well

[LosAngelesBeauty]

I am crossing my fingers that the Related apartment tower on Bunker Hill goes through this year. That is needed very badly up there on Bunker Hill.

[edluva]

brigham, you act as though downtown will become the manhattan of los angeles, when it is clear it will never consolidate the roles that beverly hills, melrose ave, hollywood, venice, century city, koreatown, and west hollywood have evolved over decades to serve for this region. ignorant fantasies like yours only serve to delay acceptance among laypeople that los angeles is a unique city of its own.

like i said, noone in tokyo walks from one station to another on purpose. the distances are too great. and contrary to what your ignorance seems to suggest, tokyo isn't carpeted with "4 dimensional" urbanism between every major station. it is carpeted with a mix of relatively uninteresting residential neighborhoods (albeit at three times the density) not unlike what would exist had LA built a dense urban rail network connecting its own nodes of activity.

i don't know if you're bias for downtown comes from what you do for work (don't you you promote businesses for the cbd or something?) but you need to travel more, and stop being so myopic about this great city.

[pesto]

Originally Posted by BrighamYen

Urbanism is about synergy and Manhattan has it down like a pro. All those areas you mentioned are connected seamlessly together and feed off of each other's energy creating something where the whole (being Manhattan) is greater than the sum of its parts.

LA, on the other hand, sure it's got a lot of neighborhoods as well, but because they are separated from each other by vast distances of suburban style developments--separating commercial streets and nodes far from each other with homogeneous residential areas--the synergy that could have been created is lost. It just isn't the same going from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills as it is going from East Village to Hells Kitchen. With Manhattan, it is CONTIGUOUSLY urban throughout its built environment. In fact, you could walk pretty much the entire length of Manhattan (or at least from Midtown to Downtown). In LA, esp the Westside, you can't walk 2 blocks usually without feeling odd. Try walking from the Beverly Center to SLS along La Cienega and you know what I mean. Granted, 8500 Burton will help, a little. LA is NOT a contiguous urban city. These nodes are too spread out and it will always be a hassle to travel between them. Obviously transit will help tie things together, but thank goodness there is a large downtown urban area which gives you a much BIGGER urban fix than any of the other nodes in LA.

Downtown LA is the ONLY place in LA that can offer a semblance of urbanism at its best because it is contiguously urban throughout its entire core. Commercial 4-D (4 directional - north, east, south, and west) instead of 2-D (or linear) like most of LA such as La Cienega, La Brea, Wilshire, etc.

That allows all of Downtown LA's future neighborhoods to continue to mature and then eventually meld together seamlessly, creating synergy that begins to form a powerful urban center where the whole (being Downtown LA) is greater than the sum of its parts (South Park, FiDi, Bunker Hill, Civic Center, Little Tokyo, Historic Core, Chinatown, Fashion District, City West, El Pueblo, Arts District, etc.).

Agree with most of this. A couple of notes:

Manhattan is NOT in general 4D. The avenues tend to be commercial and the streets residential. Exceptions exist (e.g., midtown and much of downtown ("Wall St."), which are not generally considered pleasant places to live). But the upper east and west side follow this pattern as does the LES. Many streets in Greenwich Village, Gramercy Park, etc., are either all commercial or all residential. Downtown LA has little sfh's or residential without retail, which makes it closer to midtown or Wall St.

The Westside is "vapid and boring"? A pretty broad statement to begin with and tough to support given the rich, famous, gay, artsy, design, hip, educated, professional, multi-ethnic, media-oriented, clubbing, museum and theater-attending crowd that lives there. I really don't want to argue this, but my guess is that most NY or London people moving to LA (and not retiring) move to the westside. SM and WeHo, BH and Beverly Center.

But, here's to LA growing together in density and to pedestrian and subway links everywhere.

[alki]

Originally Posted by edluva

brigham, you act as though downtown will become the manhattan of los angeles, when it is clear it will never consolidate the roles that beverly hills, melrose ave, hollywood, venice, century city, koreatown, and west hollywood have evolved over decades to serve for this region.

What exactly are these roles that BH, Melrose, Hollywood et all have evolved over decades? And why are they so formidable that DTLA can't compete with them?

ignorant fantasies like yours only serve to delay acceptance among laypeople that los angeles is a unique city of its own.

Its seems to me the "laypeople" [sic] haven't liked the state of DT that has existed for decades and avoided it like the plague. Its only since DT has started to moved in the direction Brigham is suggesting that DTLA has started attracting the "laypeople" [sic] once again.

like i said, noone in tokyo walks from one station to another on purpose. the distances are too great. and contrary to what your ignorance seems to suggest, tokyo isn't carpeted with "4 dimensional" urbanism between every major station. it is carpeted with a mix of relatively uninteresting residential neighborhoods (albeit at three times the density) not unlike what would exist had LA built a dense urban rail network connecting its own nodes of activity.

Who was talking about Tokyo? The comparison was between LA and Manhattan.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by ThreeHundred

Let citywatch think that he's peeling back some closely guarded secret that DTLA is full of parking lots and deadzones. That's his lot in life. :\

and, threehundred, we don't know that LA isn't like NYC, or that LA doesn't have good transportation, or that more of the $$ & ppl with $$ in LA prefer the west side of town to hoods farther east, or that most ppl in LA like to drive cars instead of walking?!

For any post I have that points out what you point out that I'm always pointing out, there are a million times more posts about why LA isn't like NYC (or some other city), why LA needs better transit, or that LA needs to do X number of things to make ppl want to walk instead of drive around, or that some new proj won't win a Pritzker prize, or isn't more urban or has too much enclosed parking.



but quite seriously, I don't think most ppl in LA, whether they're locals or visitors, run around being cuz LA isn't like manhattan or that the red line doesn't go to a thousand more places, or that so many ppl drive instead of walk. Yes, some ppl do feel about LA cuz of that, but I think far more ppl are turned off by the fugliness, by there not being enough of......


lacurbed.com



^ talking about nyc is no more OT than talking about a hood not too far west of dtla, so hurrah that the big deadzone east of the pantages on Hollywood blvd finally is being replaced with new devlpt!

Ppl through the yrs have said they're disappointed by hollywood, & I don't think that's cuz they believe the area needs more tall towers, or subways or wider sidewalks. I think that's mainly cuz of all the looking parts of it. And what can be said about hollywood also applies to dt.

another reason why I try to avoid singling out NYC as some paradigm to ooh & ahh over----& getting into city vs city postings here----is cuz I don't want to give ppl there any bigger swelled heads than they've already got about their town. But MAINLY it's cuz whenever I have problems with LA, it's rarely due to it not comparing favorably with other cities. IOW, when I've been in dtla & felt about it, it was cuz of its own problems & looking sections, with the niceness or strengths of other cities the last thing on my mind at that moment.

[Zgolden]

Finally back home from MN, went to Downtown today, and even though it was a Sunday, I was shocked to see as many people on the streets as I did. Umamicatessan was smaller than I thought, but Broadway is turning more and more pleasant, and in fact everywhere is! Anyway,from a photo I took, here's how the Broad has been doing:

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by Zgolden

Finally back home from MN, went to Downtown today, and even though it was a Sunday, I was shocked to see as many people on the streets as I did. Umamicatessan was smaller than I thought, but Broadway is turning more and more pleasant, and in fact everywhere is! Anyway,from a photo I took, here's how the Broad has been doing:

The number of people downtown on saturdays and sundays is really growing at a very fast rate. 2 years ago, when i moved down here, it was a ghost town on Sundays... now, its not too shabby. if we had retail down here, it would be a completely different story.

i really do wonder which retail store will be the first to take the plunge and open up in the historic core on 7th street. it will snowball immediately afterwards, guaranteed

[Illithid Dude]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

i really do wonder which retail store will be the first to take the plunge and open up in the historic core on 7th street. it will snowball immediately afterwards, guaranteed

Urban Outfitters and H&M have long been rumored to be actively looking for Downtown Space. Same with Uniqlo and Forever 21. And don't forget, there is already retail downtown! Skingraft has a great store, as do many other boutiques. As a matter of fact, a very high end bag store just opened up, called.... Sand something? I forget. Either way, it's actually a very high end store, the bag store. They also sell a lot of other clothing, like Nudie Jeans and Oliver People's glasses. Frankly, I'd prefer if downtown went the independent boutique route rather then the mass market clothing store route. Gives it more character IMO.

[ziggy331]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

i really do wonder which retail store will be the first to take the plunge and open up in the historic core on 7th street. it will snowball immediately afterwards, guaranteed

The success of the 7th and Fig plaza (or whatever it's called now) will go a long way in determining the retail scene in downtown IMO.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by sings twin

Found this excellent live cam of 901 West Olympic (The new Marriott).

thanks for that link! that cam & the other one for the broad museum are a big help to ppl from outside of the hood who are interested in tracking ongoing work on such projs. The marriott cam is already allowing me to see another long needed change that appears to be underway....the dismantling of the tacky phone poles on francisco st.



marriott2lalive.com


since this is LA, you take whatevah you can get. so TG for small favors.

[Virtual Urban Vision]

The urban comparo that happens here is ridiculous. Cities evolve, Santa Monica was nothing more than a bedroom community through the last three decades. Like it or not it is becoming a transit oriented urban center. Likewise as more and more transit branches out of Downtown, development on a scale that would never be permitted in the westside, will happen organically and in many respects already is. New York, LA comparisons will never make sense just on the basis that LA is not tightly bound by aquatic borders of New York. I know this is a little redundant for most of you and I thank you for your time.

[pesto]

Originally Posted by Virtual Urban Vision

The urban comparo that happens here is ridiculous. Cities evolve, Santa Monica was nothing more than a bedroom community through the last three decades. Like it or not it is becoming a transit oriented urban center. Likewise as more and more transit branches out of Downtown, development on a scale that would never be permitted in the westside, will happen organically and in many respects already is. New York, LA comparisons will never make sense just on the basis that LA is not tightly bound by aquatic borders of New York. I know this is a little redundant for most of you and I thank you for your time.

A good reminder and very succinct, both of which are good. All I will add is the NY, even hemmed in as it is, spreads its civic institutions over 12 miles and more and has sports facilities in 2 states, 4 boroughs and on LI.

[pesto]

Originally Posted by Illithid Dude

Urban Outfitters and H&M have long been rumored to be actively looking for Downtown Space. Same with Uniqlo and Forever 21. And don't forget, there is already retail downtown! Skingraft has a great store, as do many other boutiques. As a matter of fact, a very high end bag store just opened up, called.... Sand something? I forget. Either way, it's actually a very high end store, the bag store. They also sell a lot of other clothing, like Nudie Jeans and Oliver People's glasses. Frankly, I'd prefer if downtown went the independent boutique route rather then the mass market clothing store route. Gives it more character IMO.

Zara would be another good choice; given their European roots, they are used to multi-story lay-outs, without becoming the sizes of US dept. stores.