LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 4.0

[ConstructDTLA]

Wow. If Towne couldn't hang 8 months, I wonder how much longer Figaro has (which is consistently much more desolate than Towne).

[colemonkee]

^ I wonder if the closing of Towne had more to do with an ownership and/or chef shakeup and not necessarily slow business. In other restaurant news, Kitchen Table next to Baco Mercat has also closed down. A good friend of mine has the inside scoop as to why (he says "long story"), but I haven't had a chance to talk to him about it in detail.

Regarding the Olympic and Olive project, the massing and height actually isn't bad - 7 story buildings, if they meet the street correctly, create a decent amount of density and create not only a nice human scale feel, but let light in and create view corridors between highrises. It's just the design that sucks. The corner view isn't terrible, to be perfectly honest, but the Hill Street side is just horrendous, in my opinion. Cheap materials and zero thought/imagination went into that portion of the design. Hell, the alley elevation looks better than the Hill Street elevation, which will be much more visible.

I will buy the entire LA forum a beer the day that TCA is awarded it's final project in LA. These guys are terrible.

[Illithid Dude]

Originally Posted by colemonkee

^ I wonder if the closing of Towne had more to do with an ownership and/or chef shakeup and not necessarily slow business. In other restaurant news, Kitchen Table next to Baco Mercat has also closed down. A good friend of mine has the inside scoop as to why (he says "long story"), but I haven't had a chance to talk to him about it in detail.

From what I've heard about Towne, it seems the issue was mostly chef-based. They are, after all, opening up a new restaurant there within two months.

[ChelseaFC]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

Exactly. This is the natural progression, especially in that area where there are so many vacant lots. 7 story buildings side by side can be very dense. The most important aspects are retail and the connection to the street and pedestrian.

I actually think the design on this one isnt too bad, but i hate stucco with a passion. i wish we would get more daring glass, steel and concrete stuff.

Milan, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Berlin, etc. are all primarily 7 stories or less. Usually less.

[202_Cyclist]

Originally Posted by ChelseaFC

Milan, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Berlin, etc. are all primarily 7 stories or less. Usually less.

Exactly. DC is all 7-10 stories and we don't have a single surface parking lot in all of downtown. All of these 5-10 story buildings, especially if there is ground-floor retail, add density, make the streets more vibrant, expand the customer-base of downtown. allow more people to live near transit. Additionally, as it has been said by others, as the surface parking lots get converted into housing and the price of land increases, it makes taller buildings more feasible.

[BrandonJXN]

Originally Posted by ChelseaFC

Milan, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Berlin, etc. are all primarily 7 stories or less. Usually less.

Even here in Chicago, you see a lot of 4 to 8 story buildings (coupled with numerous 15-30 story towers that are all over the city). Add that to Chicago's narrow streets and lack of surface parking and that creates a very dense city.

[LAofAnaheim]

Towne had decent food, but horrible urban design that probably turned off downtown boosters. You know, people like us. We probably speak highly of Bottega Louie and Pete's cafe to get out of towers to visit, however Towne didn't get that positive reception. I think it had to do with the urban design. It reminded me if the shattered lunar moon restaurant at Sky Lofts (previous to Big Wangs) where the owner had tempered glass so people could not see in/out of the restaurant, basically turning a blind eye to the neighborhood. Towne did the same with the curtains. I told the owner last June, you will not survive if you close the curtains, thus shielding the street view between pedestrians and patrons. I told him to look at the success of Bottega Louie. You need to be warm to the downtown cloud and not introvert, otherwise the downtown crowd would not praise your restaurant to friends/family.

To be a successful restaurant, you should not have tempered glass, curtains or other shielding decor otherwise, you are perceived to turn your back onto downtown and we don't promote you. I have them that warning, and look what happened. Notice the success of open business and those that closed down. Don't hide your restaurant from the streets of downtown.

[BrandonJXN]

^ You are talking about Tranquility Base. I wanted to go there and check it out as I liked the concept. Ahh well.

[ConstructDTLA]

Originally Posted by LAofAnaheim

To be a successful restaurant, you should not have tempered glass, curtains or other shielding decor otherwise, you are perceived to turn your back onto downtown and we don't promote you. I have them that warning, and look what happened. Notice the success of open business and those that closed down. Don't hide your restaurant from the streets of downtown.

Exactly.

I wont eat at Mas Malo anymore because those idiots have ridiculous white drywall placed in front of their windows.

I really like Coco Laurent, and it seems their business is improving. Though I CRINGE at their windows facing 7th Street which hide the restaurant from passerby.

[DistrictDirt]

Originally Posted by HunterK

Exactly.

I wont eat at Mas Malo anymore because those idiots have ridiculous white drywall placed in front of their windows.

I really like Coco Laurent, and it seems their business is improving. Though I CRINGE at their windows facing 7th Street which hide the restaurant from passerby.

Keeping diners away from the street seems like an LA thing. The absurd conclusion of this line of thinking was that restaurant owner in Silverlake that built walls out into the sidewalk to turn what was a nice outdoor dining patio into another room for his restaurant.

[tommaso]

What type of timeline are we looking at with regards to the construction site at Wilshire Grand?

[Illithid Dude]

Originally Posted by HunterK

Exactly.

I really like Coco Laurent, and it seems their business is improving. Though I CRINGE at their windows facing 7th Street which hide the restaurant from passerby.

Coco Laurent, though, isn't that bad. The huge patio they built really does wonders for the urbanity of the immediate area.

[Ragnar]

Originally Posted by HunterK

Exactly.

I wont eat at Mas Malo anymore because those idiots have ridiculous white drywall placed in front of their windows.

Ironically I won't eat there anymore because their food is terrible. (but the drywall over the windows sucks as well)

[WonderlandPark]

I ate at Coco Laurent for the first time on Sunday, it was quite good and service seemed on top of it, and eating outdoors is nice. We should have a downtown restaurant and bar sub-thread

[Valyrian Steel]

Originally Posted by tommaso

What type of timeline are we looking at with regards to the construction site at Wilshire Grand?

Deconstruction should end in late spring or early summer with excavation beginning right after (or even during demo?) . Apparently work on the actual tower isn't supposed to start until 2nd quarter of 2014. The complex should be complete by 2016 and ready for business in 2017.

Edit: Progress pic.


http://www.facebook.com/WilshireGrandCenter

[blackcat23]

One Santa Fe, taken today from the 1st Street bridge..

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by blackcat23

You can actually add another project within that picture, although it's quite a bit smaller than the ones you've outlined in red. This would be on the lot directly behind the Crash Mansion.

That proj is very much incognito, since I haven't heard anything about it til now. Perhaps that's cuz it's relatively small in scale, & doesn't have any artwork connected to it, at least that I'm aware of. While that's a bit of good news, it comes in the middle of all the debbie downer stories from dt right....starting with the report that the tallest bldg in LA recently sold for well below its replacement value.....& it's another newer tower in dt that has lots of empty space in it.

And ppl wonder why new bldgs in dtla often aren't taller, or are much smaller than they'd like them to be?!!

I notice the last dozen or so units at the Brockman lofts bldg are taking forever to be leased. More worrisome, I notice units will be listed as booked, & then a few days later they'll be available again. Ppl must be reserving apts & then ending up dropped cuz of problems with their credit history.

Now I read that another new restaurant in dt, the Kitchen table, is shutting down, along with Towne....


www.hauteliving.com


greeneconomics.blogspot.com



There's still a far reaching recession affecting dtla....certainly when it comes to filling up all the empty office bldgs....& I keep wondering when things will get better.

I was curious about what your take is on the new Ross? Especially in light of your comments about female shoppers.

blackcat23, for what it is, I think it's perfectly fine. If they can keep it from becoming the sloparamas that certain Ross stores eventually become, they will deserve an award. I had a former neighbor who was very choosy about what she wore & how she looked....& she was in a rather good middle management job.....who did shop at Ross, but only went to certain ones where the selection was good. However, a lot of what she said she liked about ross were the household items.

I think if most of the stores on broadway didn't look much more budget conscious than Ross, I wouldn't have as much problem with the street. But just about all the other shops....if they can be called that....are very fugly & even filthy looking....& what does that say about the type of person who keeps those swapmeets in business?

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by DistrictDirt

But just filling in the gaps in the meantime with something that has a retail component is what actually makes a big difference in how downtown feels. On this, I think Citywatch would agree with me

districtdirt, I'm actually one of those who not only doesn't mind new projs whose 1st floors don't contain stores, I even prefer that. That's cuz I feel better about a hood & more comfortable walking around it, even if many of its bldgs have ground floor offices or apts, or hotel rms, compared with what's true of too much of dtla.

I'm NOT happy to stroll past bldgs that have struggling small shops, or vacant spaces where shops are supposed to go, or tacky type of stores. I also don't mind bldg after bldg that lacks stores cuz I'm aware of just how difficult it is for most stores to turn a profit. And how that's even more of an issue cuz dtla still doesn't have lots of ideal potential shoppers.....women......happily moseying around in huge numbers.

Another reason is that major sections of cities famous for large crowds of ppl walking about, & that are considered very urban friendly, don't have street after street of bldgs full of shops. A perfect example is NYC, where large sections of manhattan contain nothing but apt towers or brownstones, with stores no where to be seen.

[Valyrian Steel]

Generally speaking, short buildings with no ground-floor retail are just as bad if not worse than surface parking lots. Manhattan and DTLA are not comparable.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by blackcat23

One Santa Fe, taken today from the 1st Street bridge..

Thanks to you & others for all the update pics. Santa fe is across the street from a school involved in creativity & design, so that sort of leads to something else in the hood that's related to creativity....but regrettably another bit of debbie downer news....which along with stories like the one about the tallest bldg in LA selling for almost a pittance, has been streaming out of dt over the past several days...

Struggling to maintain its independence in the face of dwindling resources, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is close to working out a five-year agreement with the National Gallery of Art in Washington to collaborate on programming, research and exhibitions, according to the chairman of the Gallery’s board of trustees.

“The goal at this point is stabilizing them and get them standing as an independent institution,” said John Wilmerding, chairman of the board of the National Gallery. “We’d like to see them survive and thrive, and if we can help them, that’s all we’re doing.”

An agreement, which Mr. Wilmerding said he thought could be finalized within a week, would be likely to raise the museum’s prestige and morale at a time when it is recovering from the loss of its chief curator and prominent board members, declining attendance figures, and scorn for some of its exhibitions, like one devoted to disco.

“It is in the best interest of the city for MOCA to remain independent,” Mr. Broad said when he bailed out that museum in 2008. For the moment he seems to have outmaneuvered Mr. Govan’s efforts. The possibility of a merger is by no means dead, however, given the museum’s pressing need for financial help.

While a merger of two of the city’s chief cultural institutions has made sense to some, others have mourned the prospect of the museum’s losing its independence. “It’s just absolutely shameful that the city won’t support MOCA as an independent institution,” said Joel Wachs, the director of the Andy Warhol Foundation and a former Museum of Contemporary Art trustee.