LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 6.0

[pwright1]

[craigs]

Thanks for the awesome photo updates, hughfb3 and pwright1. Most appreciated.



The FIG@7th shopping plaza is now nicely enclosed by skyscrapers on all sides. Loving it!

[citywatch]

Interesting contrasts between these two vids. Among the US's urban cores, dtla has long been rated as not ready for prime time. Meanwhile the other major Ca city to the north has long been more just the opposite. While this britisher transplanted to LA doesn't pull punches about dtla's negatives, he is dealing with an area that in 2023 isn't as marginal as it was 20, 50, 60 yrs ago.

In turn, the urban core of SF for decades has for over 90 yrs been rated as one of the jewels of urban America.

https://youtu.be/Gi_xq8pXLVk

The lesson in all of this? Every city is in it to win it...& to never take things for granted. Also: the line of a city's health or success is a very thin one. Ppl at LA city hall & elsewhere in LA had better always remember that.


• Video Link

[Quixote]

Really, really can’t wait to see Olympic/Hill and 520 Mateo impact the skyline. Olympic/Hill for its height and filling in a major dead zone next to the Mayan; 520 Mateo for introducing a new scale to the Arts District, plus the design being classy.

Other than that, I’m most anxious for the Regional Connector to open and Oceanwide to finish.

[craigs]

Snowy mountain skyline, from LA Reddit:

[badrunner]

Great pic. The mountains look very inviting. One of these days I'll try a winter ascent of Mt. Baldy.

[citywatch]

This shows good aerial drone shots of some of the theaters along broadway, including the renovated upper floors of the Arcade theater bldg, but also the really rundown condition of the nearby roxy theater. I believe that property is owned by an absentee landlord based in Australia. But someone still rents at least one of the ground floor spaces in his bldg.

What stands out are how taggers risk life & limb to graffiti parts of bldgs that are several dozens of feet in the air...hard to reach spaces, crevices. No fear...they put construction crews working on highrise projs to shame. But unlike those ppl, taggers aren't being paid & they're not doing something that helps improve dtla...


• Video Link

[craigs]

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a study by the University of Toronto and the University of California, Berkeley, shows downtown Los Angeles is back to 65% of the activity it had in fall of 2019. That's good enough to rank #27 out of 62 North American downtowns for recovery.

For reference, downtown San Diego is at 99%, downtown Sacramento is at 75%, downtown San Jose is at 68%, downtown Oakland is at 49%, and downtown San Francisco--ranking last in all of North America--has only 31% of the activity it had in fall of 2019. Out of state downtowns are all over the place: New York is at 74%, Houston is at 61%, Toronto is at 53%, Chicago is at 50%, and Seattle is at 44% (full list at the link above).

So downtown LA has a way to go to recover from the pandemic and work-from-home, but not as far as many other peer cities.

[zonedgreg]

DTLA development faces uncertain future
http://www.ladowntownnews.com/business/d...70317e4-9611-11ed-8047-afb8e6739b28.html

Great article on the state of DTLA development and more specifically, Olympia. Good news is IT'S ALIVE! But it's not certainly well... But the owners are here to stay and are committed to the project which is great.

The article hits on a few notes with LA development problems: namely city hall and how stalled decisions at the city council level are for new developments (please please please approve the new DTLA community plan by May or else it'll get delayed a year!), high construction costs, high financing costs, totally different market from pre-Covid.

I feel like there's a number of projects that have been approved at the city planning commission level and waiting for the city council approval or have already been approved by city council that haven't moved forward for these four reasons.

I miss the days of when it felt like each month there was a new tower proposed in downtown. Those stalled projects I'm mentioning must be facing similar issues to Olympia, but we'll never know until we get an in depth interview with project managers like this article did

[Illithid Dude]

Originally Posted by zonedgreg

DTLA development faces uncertain future
http://www.ladowntownnews.com/business/d...70317e4-9611-11ed-8047-afb8e6739b28.html

Great article on the state of DTLA development and more specifically, Olympia. Good news is IT'S ALIVE! But it's not certainly well... But the owners are here to stay and are committed to the project which is great.

The article hits on a few notes with LA development problems: namely city hall and how stalled decisions at the city council level are for new developments (please please please approve the new DTLA community plan by May or else it'll get delayed a year!), high construction costs, high financing costs, totally different market from pre-Covid.

I feel like there's a number of projects that have been approved at the city planning commission level and waiting for the city council approval or have already been approved by city council that haven't moved forward for these four reasons.

I miss the days of when it felt like each month there was a new tower proposed in downtown. Those stalled projects I'm mentioning must be facing similar issues to Olympia, but we'll never know until we get an in depth interview with project managers like this article did

Kevin de Leon is holding back downtown to an unbelievable degree. Just an awful person all around, clinging on to power no matter the cost.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by zonedgreg

Great article on the state of DTLA development and more specifically, Olympia. Good news is IT'S ALIVE!

Along with photo updates from sspers, your link is the type of post I really like coming across....even more so since I thought Olympia was a foreign owned & Chinese driven, funded proj. I got that wrong. It's controlled by local sources! So its future is more likely. whew!

meanwhile, when I notice the dwp bldg's moat & fountains have been kept totally dry all the time for quite awhile now, & that a few yrs ago the city was purposefully not even running the bldgs's geyser fountains....to save energy...that reflects how the ppl running LA are into, "this is why we can't have nice things" & "who gives AF?!" The first sentence highlighted below in red is another example of that.

“The reality is almost no projects in and around Downtown LA pencil right now, and pencil meaning we will not be able to obtain financing,” he said. “No bank will give us a loan on this project unless there is the TOT rebate, which (is) when you stay at a hotel and there’s a 9.5%, or something like that, tax added on to your bill when you check out.

“The council has been unable to take up any of these type of measures since the pandemic, and to be frank with you, we’re kind of frozen right now,” Wang said.

“You take a four-and-a-half-year entitlement, (with) a lot of uncertainty during it, and you get to now, (when) we’ve had multiple different councilmembers have scandals,” Kaplan added. “The city is not willing to provide the financial incentives that it has been. … I think the unfortunate reality is that this is the case with a lot of developers, particularly in and around Central LA at this time.”

City Century has currently invested over $200 million in the project, which Wang estimates is a less than 15% representation of the overall budget.

“We’re crawling out of this COVID fog like everyone else,” Wang said. “It’s just reached the point that without the TOT, with the fees continuing to go up, with the services that the city’s providing deteriorating and getting worse, not better, the condition that Downtown is in, it’s just gotten to that breaking point.”

According to Wang, despite battling through a pandemic, turbulent economic period and City Council controversies, the Olympia project is here to stay.

^ The 'here to stay' comment is hopeful, but I don't think the negatives pointed out by the devlprs or property owners are helped by this...

Los Angeles is a city of the most striking –– and often egregious –– paradoxes and contradictions. Often exciting, exhilarating and creative, it is a world center of art, culture and education. Its artists, musicians, literary figures, journalists, scholars, actors and filmmakers, architects, museums, colleges, universities, hospitals and many other professions and institutions rank among the finest ever. The city regularly produces progressive politicians and policies and many of its neighborhoods boast of their extremely comfortable standards of living.

At the same time, it’s a city — and an entire region — beset with poverty, inequality, racism, police misconduct, homelessness and massive human despair. No district better exemplifies those contradictions more strikingly than Downtown.

But Downtown is also the home of thousands of desperate souls who exist marginally in tents and other makeshift shelters, as well as migrants, many of whom lack proper documentation, from Mexico, Central America and other regions where turmoil and violence rule the day. Now, in early 2023, LA’s new progressive mayor, Karen Bass, has unveiled an ambitious plan to address the massive homeless problem. One hopes that she will be successful, but like many others on the Left, I fear that the problem may be intractable, absent structural change in capitalism’s grotesque divide among wealth and power.

^ The person running against her a few months ago is a major local real estate devlpr, the type who may have approached things differently. Or maybe he wouldn't have. Either way, the "intractable" may be even worse if ppl in LA don't mind following the saying of, "insanity is doing the same thing over again & expecting different results."

[craigs]

60-story apartment tower starts to rise at 1000 S Hill Street

Onni Group is building its biggest project yet at Olympic and Hill in DTLA

Steven Sharp
Urbanize Los Angeles
January 19, 2023

An orange tower crane stands high above the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Hill Street, where prolific developer prolific Onni Group has commenced vertical construction at its largest Downtown Los Angeles high-rise yet.

The project, which has the addresses of 230 W. Olympic Boulevard and 1000 S. Hill Street, will consist of a 60-story building featuring 700 apartments on its upper floors. Below, plans call for a podium structure featuring a 1,000-car garage lined by 15,000 square feet of street-fronting retail and restaurant space.

IBI Group is serving as the architect of record for the glass-and-steel high-rise, taking the reins from Chris Dikeakos Architects, which handled the entitlement design. Set to stand 760 feet in height, the Olympic and Hill tower would be the city's 4th tallest building if completed today, and its tallest residential high-rise.

The tower, which has a contemporary look similar to Onni's other Downtown towers, takes the rare step of fully masking its above-grade parking - something which is encouraged, but not required, under the Downtown Design Guidelines. Habitable spaces and residential units are planned along the exterior of the garage, fully obscuring it from view along both Olympic and Hill.

An environmental study conducted for the project estimated that construction of the tower would be completed over period of approximately 30 months.

While the Olympic and Hill tower may stand head and shoulders above its low-rise neighbors along Olympic Boulevard, the project will eventually have similar-scaled neighbors one block to the south on 11th Street, where Mack Real Estate Development, Crown Group, and Crescent Heights have plans for four high-rise residential buildings on the blocks between Grand Avenue and Hill Street.

Onni Group, which has emerged as one of the biggest residential developers in the City of Los Angeles in the past decade, is also pursuing additional Downtown projects at the former home of the Los Angeles Times and in the Arts District. Outside of Los Angeles, the Vancouver-based firm is planning office, residential, and hotel projects in Hollywood, Mid-Wilshire, Long Beach, and Glendale.

[craigs]

And the images:

[plinko]

Love love love the continued pushing of the skyline southeasterly.

Originally Posted by craigs

60-story apartment tower starts to rise at 1000 S Hill Street

Onni Group is building its biggest project yet at Olympic and Hill in DTLA

Steven Sharp
Urbanize Los Angeles
January 19, 2023

An orange tower crane stands high above the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Hill Street, where prolific developer prolific Onni Group has commenced vertical construction at its largest Downtown Los Angeles high-rise yet.

The project, which has the addresses of 230 W. Olympic Boulevard and 1000 S. Hill Street, will consist of a 60-story building featuring 700 apartments on its upper floors. Below, plans call for a podium structure featuring a 1,000-car garage lined by 15,000 square feet of street-fronting retail and restaurant space.

IBI Group is serving as the architect of record for the glass-and-steel high-rise, taking the reins from Chris Dikeakos Architects, which handled the entitlement design. Set to stand 760 feet in height, the Olympic and Hill tower would be the city's 4th tallest building if completed today, and its tallest residential high-rise.

The tower, which has a contemporary look similar to Onni's other Downtown towers, takes the rare step of fully masking its above-grade parking - something which is encouraged, but not required, under the Downtown Design Guidelines. Habitable spaces and residential units are planned along the exterior of the garage, fully obscuring it from view along both Olympic and Hill.

An environmental study conducted for the project estimated that construction of the tower would be completed over period of approximately 30 months.

While the Olympic and Hill tower may stand head and shoulders above its low-rise neighbors along Olympic Boulevard, the project will eventually have similar-scaled neighbors one block to the south on 11th Street, where Mack Real Estate Development, Crown Group, and Crescent Heights have plans for four high-rise residential buildings on the blocks between Grand Avenue and Hill Street.

Onni Group, which has emerged as one of the biggest residential developers in the City of Los Angeles in the past decade, is also pursuing additional Downtown projects at the former home of the Los Angeles Times and in the Arts District. Outside of Los Angeles, the Vancouver-based firm is planning office, residential, and hotel projects in Hollywood, Mid-Wilshire, Long Beach, and Glendale.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by plinko

Love love love the continued pushing of the skyline southeasterly.

Big time! Being 760 ft. tall, this tower will really help pull the center of gravity farther southward.

[colemonkee]

Moderator Edit: I deleted a few posts for personal attacks. I know that citywatch's posts may annoy some people, but the rules of the forum are very clear about personal attacks. plinko & craigs, the next one will result in a two-week suspension.

[Zapatan]

Originally Posted by craigs

Big time! Being 760 ft. tall, this tower will really help pull the center of gravity farther southward.

760' is great for the area but imagine a last minute height increase to top the (potentially) upcoming 1045 Olive. Onni should do it.

Would be awesome...

[citywatch]

I wish my last post hadn't vanished into cyberspace since these 2 vids, which show changes to the arts dist, were a part of it....

• Video Link

• Video Link

I also commented that ppl presumably visit this forum about dtla because they're interested in dtla. I asked, if they're not, why do they drop by? If my posts don't interest users, that's fine. If my posts are ignored by users, that's fine. If my posts are too long, skip to the next one. Personally, I'm not into short postings that are an opinion or generic comment....unless it's similar to something like, 'I've just been told that groundbreaking on the Olympia proj is scheduled for Feb 10th'.

If I visit a forum on airports & planes, & ppl start complaining that some of the posts regard LAX or La Guardia & some mention that the United Airlines lounge is nicer than expected or that it isn't large enough, what would that be all about?

[caligrad]

Originally Posted by zonedgreg

DTLA development faces uncertain future
http://www.ladowntownnews.com/business/d...70317e4-9611-11ed-8047-afb8e6739b28.html

Great article on the state of DTLA development and more specifically, Olympia. Good news is IT'S ALIVE! But it's not certainly well... But the owners are here to stay and are committed to the project which is great.

The article hits on a few notes with LA development problems: namely city hall and how stalled decisions at the city council level are for new developments (please please please approve the new DTLA community plan by May or else it'll get delayed a year!), high construction costs, high financing costs, totally different market from pre-Covid.

I feel like there's a number of projects that have been approved at the city planning commission level and waiting for the city council approval or have already been approved by city council that haven't moved forward for these four reasons.

I miss the days of when it felt like each month there was a new tower proposed in downtown. Those stalled projects I'm mentioning must be facing similar issues to Olympia, but we'll never know until we get an in depth interview with project managers like this article did

It's just mind boggling how something that makes 100% sense can't get through. LA city gov LOVES to go on TV, screaming about housing and affordability but refuse to cut miles of unnecessary red tape. There's no reason a project should take 5 years to even get a permit to dig dirt. Karen ran her campaign on housing and the homeless, let's see if she can beg developers to build downtown with hefty rebates, expedited approvals, permitting and etc. (something she hasn't promised but she should).

When was the last time downtown saw a mew solid proposal????

[craigs]

From LA Reddit, a really nice winter skyline shot: