LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 6.0

[Easy]

Originally Posted by Bwin517

Developers advertise their apartments as "luxury" to make them sound more appealing to renters/buyers but most of what's coming online are really "market rate" units. The rents are relatively median priced for the area(1bd roughly 2000-2600). The only real luxury buildings to come online downtown this year is Atelier and Metropolis.

True but the apartments include things like refrigerators, dishwashers, and gyms. LA has been so far behind by building almost nothing new for decades that such things are considered "luxury" here. 😂

[Easy]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

Demand outstrips supply, so I expect the building pace will continue.

That make sense but if things that made sense always happened, we wouldn't have had a shortage in the first place.

[scania]

Originally Posted by Easy

True but the apartments include things like refrigerators, dishwashers, and gyms. LA has been so far behind by building almost nothing new for decades that such things are considered "luxury" here. 😂

Hey those things are considered and marketed as luxury in every major city, including NYC and SF. Trust me, I used to live there.

[Mojeda101]

Looks like Hanzens has downsized. Removed one of the towers.

http://urbanize.la/post/shenzhen-haz...er-development

[scania]

Originally Posted by Mojeda101

Looks like Hanzens has downsized. Removed one of the towers.

http://urbanize.la/post/shenzhen-haz...er-development

This is still great. In some aspects it looks better.

[112597jorge]

Originally Posted by Mojeda101

Looks like Hanzens has downsized. Removed one of the towers.

http://urbanize.la/post/shenzhen-haz...er-development

They killed the uniqueness of the design it originally had . It was one of my favorite projects, shame the design was changed so dramatically.

http://urbanize.la/sites/default/fil...?itok=egwVoY7c

RIP

[black_crow]

The height didn't change.

The tall one is still 540 feet and looks even taller now (small triangle on top is gone).
We lost one tower and yes, the old design was not bad, but I can live with the new design too.


The podium next to the small tower is disappointing, but well....

Originally Posted by Easy

What are you suggesting? That people that want to live near the beach, on the westside, in the Valley etc will instead decide to move downtown just because that's where housing is being built?

ChargerCarl has a point.

.. and 95% of the people don't live next to the beach.

We need more residential units and we need them soon. The whole county grew by more than 40,000 between mid-2015 and mid-2016.
Only approximately 25,000 new units were built in all of Los Angeles between the years 2010 and 2015.

That's the reason for the growing rent prices and yes, people will move to Downtown and fill the residential units quickly.
There is no better borough for people who need/like public transportation. That's (just) one of the points that make Downtown unique.

Those luxury condos are a slightly different thing. I admit that Downtown’s multifamily market is at risk of becoming oversupplied on the luxury end, but we have many rich foreign buyers, these condos will sell over time.

PS:

I doubt that people want to discredit Downtown. That's not the reason why we are here.

[Illithid Dude]

Really don't like the new plans. I can live without the third tower, but they value engineered potentially very interesting architecture down to something bland, forgetable, and ultimately, cheap looking. This is very dissapointing to me.

[112597jorge]

Originally Posted by Illithid Dude

Really don't like the new plans. I can live without the third tower, but they value engineered potentially very interesting architecture down to something bland, forgetable, and ultimately, cheap looking. This is very dissapointing to me.

Feel the same way. The third tower being gone isn't what gets me mad, it's the value engineering that has made this potentially amazing project into a generic bland tower proposal.

[Valyrian Steel]

^ Thirded. This looks like any other south park development now, complete with a huge ass (aka podium).

[JerellO]

Wow that's very disappointing i loved the previous design sooooo much

[ThebiteofSuarez]

Originally Posted by Mojeda101

Looks like Hanzens has downsized. Removed one of the towers.

http://urbanize.la/post/shenzhen-haz...er-development

The media facade seems to have raised questions at the city, especially that last proposal where they went crazy and made the south facade of the tower all signage. From reading the plan response comments, one of the concerns was how would the signage lighting affect the southern residential towers. Though that is one aspect, I guess the cost might have also influenced the elimination of one of the towers.

Though the angled roof towers were memorable, their facade designs were very tacky imo. This one looks much better and simpler, though the renderings make it look dull. We'll see how this will look with better renderings.

[jgacis]

Originally Posted by ThebiteofSuarez

The media facade seems to have raised questions at the city, especially that last proposal where they went crazy and made the south facade of the tower all signage. From reading the plan response comments, one of the concerns was how would the signage lighting affect the southern residential towers. Though that is one aspect, I guess the cost might have also influenced the elimination of one of the towers.

Though the angled roof towers were memorable, their facade designs were very tacky imo. This one looks much better and simpler, though the renderings make it look dull. We'll see how this will look with better renderings.

Makes sense if you're only looking at this from an aesthetic perspective. What was also lost with the third tower were the 215 condos; the density that would have contributed more to the economic activity and walkability in this area. Sure, cost is important, but there are also intangible benefits towards the urban fabric of DTLA with more towers. Nevertheless, it still is better use of land than what is there now.

[ThebiteofSuarez]

Originally Posted by jgacis

Makes sense if you're only looking at this from an aesthetic perspective. What was also lost with the third tower were the 215 condos; the density that would have contributed more to the economic activity and walkability in this area. Sure, cost is important, but there are also intangible benefits towards the urban fabric of DTLA with more towers. Nevertheless, it still is better use of land than what is there now.

The EIR comment responses on section 2.0 Comments and Responses, comments 9-1, 10-3, 13-4, 13-9, 13-12, 13-18, 13-24, and 14-2 deal with the illumination, though I agree that it is an aesthetic issue, projects can be modified if does not get approval. You are seeing the responses that are provided to the comments, but we do not know for certain if they were not accepted. I think they weren't. As for the removal of the angled top, in page 118, it mentions that Helipads are still required even though the requirement was recently modified by the LAFD, and offers proposals to bypass the requirement...which I figure they may not have met.

As for the removal of the third tower, though unfortunate, if the developer has determined that the market will not demand it, it will not invest in developing it. Towers are expensive and if they predict that in the time that the tower is completed there won't be buyers, they won't risk their investment.

[black_crow]

Originally Posted by ThebiteofSuarez

.. mentions that Helipads are still required even though the requirement was recently modified by the LAFD, and offers proposals to bypass the requirement...which I figure they may not have met. .

Correct, helipads are not required as long as companies put in extra safety features like special elevators and additional stairways.


.. but those changes did not happen recently. Garcetti announced that one in 2014.
Shenzhen Hazens development team knew about those safety features and they could have arranged them.

The problem is more often than not that those safety features are expensive and so was the whole design of all these towers.

By the way, the reflection is de facto a restrictive condition.
The Wilshire Grand Center had the same challenges. Some lawyers argue that there is too much reflection and that their proposal was misleading.

Granted, you can work around those problems, but they have to come into consideration.

[ConstructDTLA]

Video of the Wilshire Grand sail acting as a fluid LED screen:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUHhu3mAi2R/?taken-by=constructdtla

[ocman]

Originally Posted by ConstructDTLA

Video of the Wilshire Grand sail acting as a fluid LED screen:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUHhu3mAi2R/?taken-by=constructdtla

i really hope they’re still testing. It looks like they’re missing green LED strips.

[blackcat23]

Fourth Metropolis Tower Tops Out

[Quixote]

^ Definitely a historic milestone when you consider that it's been 30 years in the making.

[BrandonJXN]

Now move the Metropolis crew a block away and have them start on Olympia.