LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 4.0

[Illithid Dude]

I've been riding the Expo Line a little, as the terminus is within walking distance of one of my friends houses, and I have noticed a substantial increase of people who, at least on the visual spectrum, don't look as though they are being forced to ride transit. I figure, the more of these 'transit by choice' people we get, the better.

And in brighter news, the guys who developed the Pacific Electric Lofts are developing a new apartment building on Broadway.

And guys (and girls), don't get down on the Office Article. Three major new office developments are being planned downtown right now, so clearly, something right is happening.

[LAofAnaheim]

Originally Posted by citywatch

given the history of new devlpt often having delays within delays within delays....some of it due to silly politics----the proposed new shopping ctr next to USC is now on an even slower track?!!-----& the apt tower at 9th & olive possibly not starting one second sooner than expected, & the info from the article that sings twin posted, I wanna say, in the famous last words from a well known movie set in LA....

forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.








^ and some ppl, myself included, actually once believed improving transit, esp the opening of the red line, would change long term trends of businesses always making a beeline for hoods other than dtla.

I imagine most of the ppl out there who make the decisions where their office will be located couldn't care less whether new towers in dt have parking podiums or not, or stores on the 1st floor or not, or new bldgs are too tall or too short, or whether a new proj will earn a design prize or not, or whether jane jacobs principles in urban design are being followed or not. I bet most of them continue to notice & are about the fugly, rundown vibe that still is noticeable in too much of dt & the areas that they have to go through to get there. that's , cuz I don't know what it will take to finally change such trends.

Here's the difference.

My company chose to be in Santa Monica instead of downtown LA because they could provide free parking. Much cheaper for parking here, whereas in downtown LA, the company would not be able to provide all of its employees free parking or the cost would be a s***load.

Surprised?

[Quixote]

New design?



http://archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=6225

[ziggy331]

Originally Posted by Westsidelife

New design?



http://archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=6225

If that's true and this is the chosen design, I think I'm a fan. Not too far off from the original plan and it still incorporates the spire (which may push it to be the new tallest?)

[bobcat]

Originally Posted by ziggy331

If that's true and this is the chosen design, I think I'm a fan. Not too far off from the original plan and it still incorporates the spire (which may push it to be the new tallest?)

At first I completely missed the spire, but now I see it. Looks like 1100+ feet.

[alki]

Originally Posted by colemonkee

That new subway canopy is largely installed - or at least the structure is - at the Temple entrance of the Civic Center stop (which) is at Hill Street entrance to the middle block of Grand Park. It looks pretty nice. And they're starting preliminary work at the 1st and Hill side for installation of the same canopy.

I think it will become an iconic symbol of the city.........like the LAX control tower or like the entryways to the Paris Metro. The design fits LA well.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by ziggy331

If that's true and this is the chosen design, I think I'm a fan. Not too far off from the original plan and it still incorporates the spire (which may push it to be the new tallest?)

i think the new building fits perfectly. lets get this started asap!

[alki]

Originally Posted by Illithid Dude

My guess is that the University Village will go through. USC has sway, in that regard.

But concerning the article on office space, I'm confused. This article seems to fly in the face of everything I've read about office development in DTLA, for better or for worse. I've always read that the office vacancy rate is at 18% in DT. Why does this article say the office vacancy rate is now at 14%? Did the office vacancy rate really go down 4% in the past couple months? If so, that would be cause for celebration, regardless of what the article says. Moreover, why does this article seem certain that the office vacancy rate in DT is going to rise, when every other article says not only that the office vacancy rate is going to fall, but that multiple developers are actively planing new office space in Downtown? Is there someone more versed in such affairs that can explain these issues?

There are a number of variables. First there usually are 2-4 firms that analyze office space in cities and determine vacancy factors. They all have their own methodology for crunching numbers and frequently come to their own conclusions when it comes to occupancy/vacancy rates. That's why there tends to be a spread in the numbers. Currently, in Seattle, the spread for office vacancies is 10% to 16%.

One of the big variables is determining which offices are at A and B grades and which aren't.............and how a firm treats C grade and lower office space that will likely never be rented but nonetheless is considered vacant space by some firms.

What I do is look more towards the trend and the amount of absorption each quarter and not pay too much attention to the vacancy rates.

[alki]

Originally Posted by citywatch

Any sale will be viewed as a proxy for investors' views on the future of the downtown Los Angeles office market, a poorly performing district that has struggled to find tenants for its gleaming office towers. While entertainment and technology firms like Google Inc. are growing in areas like West Los Angeles, downtown is heavy on financial-services firms and law firms, which have been contracting.

"The tenants that are in downtown L.A. are not the types of industries that L.A. does well," said Ryan McCullough, an economist at real-estate research firm CoStar Group Inc. "So far, we've seen no evidence that greater downtown is able to attract different types of tenants."

The result is a game of musical chairs, as tenants hop from one downtown building to another, often taking less space. That has led to vacancy rates in top-quality buildings downtown increasing to 14.5% in the second quarter, the highest rate since 2005, according to CoStar, even while overall Los Angeles saw its vacancy rates stay flat for the past two years around 12.5%

This is what I have been talking about............DT must start to compete more aggressively with other office markets in the city. Someone needs to start selling DT. DTLA continues to have an uphill battle in front of it.


[QUOTE]^ and some ppl, myself included, actually once believed improving transit, esp the opening of the red line, would change long term trends of businesses always making a beeline for hoods other than dtla.

I imagine most of the ppl out there who make the decisions where their office will be located couldn't care less whether new towers in dt have parking podiums or not, or stores on the 1st floor or not, or new bldgs are too tall or too short, or whether a new proj will earn a design prize or not, or whether jane jacobs principles in urban design are being followed or not. I bet most of them continue to notice & are about the fugly, rundown vibe that still is noticeable in too much of dt & the areas that they have to go through to get there. that's , cuz I don't know what it will take to finally change such trends.[/QUOTE]

The fact that DT is transit centric does make a difference. But you can't expect DT's positioning to change over nite. Think of DT as the Titanic.........after it hit the iceberg. Its been sinking for a while but that has stopped. Now its trying to reverse itself. At the same time, its having to deal with the fact that the Westside is the sun and everything centers around it, and DTLA is kind of like Pluto. DT has to get bigger and stronger before it can level the playing field with the rest of the city......esp the Westside.

[alki]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesDreamin

Lol you silly goose

LOL.

[alki]

Originally Posted by ThreeHundred

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1937 saw a bunch of new trolleys in LA........and less than two decades later their tracks were dismantled and paved over. Something smells.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by alki

During mid century of the 20th century, city leader after city leader throughout this country believed if you tore down the slums and built some shiny new buildings that downtowns throughout this country would rise phoenix like from their ashes It was an incredibly simplistic and naive approach to city building, and it didn't work. In fact, things got worse in most American cities.

You're worried about how dirty the sidewalks are? Seriously? Citywatch, I think you need to stick to suburban shopping malls.

And, alki, it would better if I or others instead worried about the pink color of the benches in the new civic ctr park? right back at you:.....

speaking of which, an article ran in the new york times a few days ago about the new park in dtla. It mentions the music center & how it will be involved in programming for the area. its counterpart in nyc, lincoln ctr, also was where a big slum area once existed. That hood was torn down in the late 1950s. I don't think anyone would mistake that section of nyc as the it once was.

As for the location of the new pk in dtla, it used to be the type of that was demolished over 40 or 50 yrs ago. And a good thing too, cuz I think the new civic ctr is much nicer now than it was around the time this b/w photo was taken......



digitallibrary.usc.edu

Los Angeles Puts a New Park at Its Heart


Monica Almeida/The New York Times

By JENNIFER MEDINA Published: August 18, 2012

LOS ANGELES — Grand Park, one of the largest new parcels of open space in this sprawling city, is the focus of all sorts of grand visions. Designed for a major concert, a farmers’ market or a participatory dance recital, it opened late last month with much fanfare, meant to attract office workers, suburbanites from across the region, tourists and the urban dwellers who call downtown home.

Sandwiched between City Hall and Disney Hall, the park is the latest attempt to revitalize a neighborhood where the sidewalks once rolled up by nightfall but that now sees a new restaurant or bar opening seemingly every week. Depending on whom you ask, it elicits comparisons to New York’s Central Park or San Francisco’s Union Square — and a couple of the most enthusiastic supporters even liken it to the Champs-Élysées.

Even as the heat neared the triple digits downtown last week, there were signs of life that might never have been seen in this stretch of land. There was 3-year-old Carri-Anne Park, splashing in the water jets near a fountain that a few months ago was almost hidden from public view. The girl’s bright pink bikini top matched the picnic table and chairs scattered through the area. (The nearly fluorescent pink lawn furniture, one of the park’s most distinctive features, is the sort of thing you might find only in Los Angeles.)


Monica Almeida/The New York Times

“You can’t compare it to anything that we have anywhere else,” said Lina Park, who brought her daughter with a group of friends from her church in Koreatown. “It’s clean, safe and big — that’s the kind of place people are going to want to come to.”

For years, officials have been trying to persuade more families to move to downtown, arguing that parents can live and work in the same neighborhood or simply have the more urban experience that they might be accustomed to on the East Coast.

So parents are encouraged to bring their children in swimsuits. By virtue of the mostly sunny weather here, the park will also feature programs year-round — “we’re not just talking summer concerts,” said Thor Steingraber, the vice president of programming at the Music Center, which will operate the county-owned park for the next year. “We’re going to make jury duty fun again,” Mr. Steingraber said, referring to the park’s location near the county courthouse.

For now, it is too early to tell whether the park will fill that role. On a recent afternoon, a Starbucks in the middle of the park seemed to be a bigger draw than the rows of palm trees and picnic tables that surround it. Ms. Molina, the county supervisor, said officials considered removing the coffee shop but were met with protests from workers in nearby buildings.


Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Peggy Richie, 81, and Katherine Nelson, 84, have lived in the city their entire lives and have seen the downtown morph from a place people want to be to a place people avoid. And in recent years, they have seen it morph back again.

“It used to be that people were afraid to come down here, and that didn’t do nobody any good,” Ms. Richie said as she walked through the park on the way from buying opera tickets at the Music Center to a late lunch at Philippe, the downtown fixture famous for its French dip sandwiches. “You have something like this, and it restores people’s excitement a little bit.”

Ms. Nelson then recalled, a little wistfully, the times when the pair would stop at a thrift shop downtown looking for bargains. It was sold a few years ago. In its place, or just nearby, is a pet boutique.

^ again, I think you make things more complicated than they really are. I don't think the hood went downhill cuz of the widespread clearance of slummy bldgs a long time ago. It went downhill in spite of that. It fell apart cuz too much other & was left untouched, including fugly parking lots & really hovel type sections of the hood. So sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, & sometimes hoods are treated like cuz they really are .

[Valyrian Steel]

Originally Posted by Westsidelife

New design?



http://archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=6225

This is great. Better than the original which I thought looked ugly. I hope the spire will be more prominent.

[LAsam]

Looks like a good design! I like how the rendering has it eclipsing the US Bank building... interesting choice of angle

Oh, and it looks like this is post 5,000 for this thread! When do we officially start thinking about a new thread?

[LAmarODom420]

Originally Posted by LAsam

Looks like a good design! I like how the rendering has it eclipsing the US Bank building... interesting choice of angle

Oh, and it looks like this is post 5,000 for this thread! When do we officially start thinking about a new thread?

When we get close to 10,000

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by pesto

Nope. These are the things tourists notice and potential middle class residents take to heart.

If anything, I believe the typical person is even more into the superficial aspects of a city or hood than generally assumed. I think that's a major reason why LA, but esp dtla, has been, & often is, rated so poorly, or far worse than I think is justified.

For instance, the city that alki calls home is imho kind of a snooze. But for reasons that I bet are based mainly on the purely superficial, it appears to make many ppl feel warm & fuzzy, & want to give it . So it normally gets way better reviews, or polls much better, than I think makes sense.

That's why I say that if ppl don't understand this, they're more likely to believe things are more complicated than they really are. That includes drawing a connection between the effort to clean up bunker hill starting over 50 yrs ago & the overall, continuing decline of the hood. The reason I believe such an assumption is overly complicated, or quite a stretch, is cuz even today I can still go to dt & be underwhelmed or disappointed by how much of it still needs to be fixed up. That's in SPITE of lots of improvements taking place over the past 10 yrs, and way more improvements occurring since the city began clearing out bunker hill. IOW, the biggest problem has been one of too little, too late, too slow.

If some of the trends evident in these vids had started to become apparent over 20 yrs ago, much less over 50 yrs ago, I bet dt wouldn't have gone downhill so far, so quickly to begin with. but these also are among the reasons that I think the hood, & LA in general, is far more interesting than the typical boutique city that, again, the average person tends to immediately wanna give good marks to.


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[SD_Phil]

Originally Posted by bobcat

At first I completely missed the spire, but now I see it. Looks like 1100+ feet.

I'm also a fan of the new design but that's a pretty thin spire (still, a spire in LA is an achievement).

I guess it all depends on what the roof height will be. If it's the tallest tower, even by a few feet, without the spire then the spire will make it look taller. If it's roof height noticeable shorter than the US Bank/ Library Tower then it'll feel cheap calling it the new tallest.

Still, I'm a fan.

[citywatch]

maps.google.com


^ finally, another current bldg on broadway will be cleaned up & reactivated, or at least its upper floors probably for the first time in yrs & yrs & yrs. It's next door to another bldg, to the left, that was converted to apts about 2 yrs ago. Even better, this is all taking place on the northern section of broadway, where shops still are plentiful.

ICO Development, the firm behind the Pacific Electric Lofts and the Mercantile Lofts, has acquired a mostly vacant property on Broadway and plans to convert it to apartments.

ICO bought the six-story building at 430 S. Broadway this month, said Alex Moradi, managing partner at the firm. He would not reveal the purchase price of the 50,000-square-foot edifice.

Moradi said plans for the project are preliminary, but he tentatively imagines 50-60 units. The building is currently home to an array of swap-meet style retailers on the street level, but the upper floors are vacant, he said. The company expects to file initial plans with the city in the next two months, Moradi said.

[SD_Phil]

^For a second I thought that was the Cliftons facade but it's not! Awesome news. Another one bites the dust.

[colemonkee]

citywatch, make sure to cite your source when quoting a news article. That is great news, though.

I'm really excited about the Korean Air Wilshire Grand project now. Reading the archpaper article, it's pretty clear that they're working with LAFD to re-write the fire code to allow alternatives to the helipad requirements. So we may have to wait a bit longer as they work that out, but not only could we get our first true pitched roof skyscraper (and hopefully more beyond that), but we might also get a new tallest. And it's just a massing model, but it looks like the base fills the lot and meets the street pretty well from the one angle we have. I'm very excited to see more renders.