LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 3.0

[Quixote]

Don't get me wrong, I have high expectations. It's just that I've come to expect these sort of bland, uninspired designs from Thomas P. Cox. I set my expectations very low for this project; I was expecting something far worse.

Yeah215, I also think a lack of inspiration was a factor in this instance. Keep in mind, other cities have much larger stocks of historic buildings. This provides inspiration to match the level of beauty and quality by using brick, stone, or whatever. I don't think stucco would be appropriate. We can't say the same for LA, however.

[edluva]

god that's a horrid color scheme. LA continues to amass architectural crap at an alarming rate. and what westsidelife said about other cities having historic buildings as contextual basis is exactly right - LA lacks context, in sense of place or time. It basically lacks an identity. that's partly why we build stupid looking buildings on a regular basis. it's also why famous architects come here to create flops of mediocrity.

[LosAngelesBeauty]

REDEVELOPMENT

Chinatown Blossom Plaza project halted
A bankruptcy filing stalls a residential and retail complex planned for the former Little Joe's site.
By Roger Vincent

March 7, 2009

Financial woes have derailed the development of Chinatown Blossom Plaza, a long-awaited $162-million apartment and retail complex set to rise on the former site of one of Los Angeles' most beloved downtown eateries.

The developer of the project, which was to replace the shuttered Little Joe's restaurant in Chinatown, on Thursday filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to prevent its lender from foreclosing on the property at Broadway and College Street.

The filing by Chinatown Blossom Plaza LLC is the latest of several in recent months among real estate developers struggling to complete projects that were planned or underway.

Blossom Plaza had been hailed as a transit-oriented development that would stack apartments on top of shops next to a light rail station. But after a lengthy planning and design process that included many public hearings, construction had yet to begin.

"To me this is a landmark project, a whole new gateway for downtown with Chinatown being in the pivotal point," said City Councilman Ed Reyes, who represents Chinatown and vowed to keep pressing to get the project started.

"We put a lot of time, effort and monetary support into this," he said. About $9 million in public funds has been invested, he said.

Little Joe's had been in business for 101 years and was one of the city's oldest restaurants when it closed in 1998 because the owners couldn't afford to remodel it to comply with new building codes for earthquake safety and disability access.

Since then, Little Joe's and its sprawling chained-off parking lot have been a blight in the heart of Chinatown, lifeless but for the occasional movie or TV shoot. It is a stark contrast to the 1960s and 1970s, when the bar and restaurant were a hangout for Dodgers players and fans, and a destination for the downtown business crowd.

It was also a frequent site for Dodgers news conferences. During Tommy Lasorda's tenure as manager in the 1980s, Little Joe's frequently sent Italian sausage, mostaccioli and linguine to Dodger Stadium, where Lasorda shared the food with his players.

The restaurant and Chinatown had lost much of their pizazz by the 1990s, and Little Joe's closed its doors with little fanfare. Hope for a turnaround surged in 2003 with the opening of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Gold Line, a 14-mile train route connecting downtown L.A. and Pasadena.

The Chinatown station is just east of Little Joe's.

Plans for a complex of housing and shops on the Little Joe's site were announced soon after the Gold Line opened by Larry Bond, the developer of a large-scale apartment and retail project across the street from the Cinerama Dome at Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood.

By that time, the city had acquired the Little Joe's property with the intention of redeveloping it. Plans included a city-owned parking garage to serve the train station and visitors to Chinatown.

Bond bought the property along with LaeRoc Partners Inc. of Manhattan Beach, and said he would put up a seven-story complex of 262 apartments over shops and restaurants, along with a public plaza. Bond and his partners formed Blossom Plaza LLC to develop the project.

The fact that nothing has been built is frustrating, said George Yu, executive director of the Chinatown Business Improvement District.

"We at the [business district] have done a tremendous amount of work to restore and revitalize what we call Old Chinatown," Yu said. "Broadway and College is the key corner."

The developer's bankruptcy filing is "a tremendous setback," Yu said. "Larry put his heart, soul and money into this project."

Bond said that he would like to "start tomorrow" on the development, but that his financial partners at Prime Property Fund had "decided not to move forward" and filed a foreclosure action late last year as owners of the first trust deed on the property. Prime Property Fund is a real estate investment trust managed by New York investment bank Morgan Stanley.

"We really felt this would have been a crowning achievement for the city," Bond said. "The Chinatown community has been overlooked for decades but is a jewel in its own right."

Morgan Stanley representatives declined to be interviewed, but issued a statement.

"Prime Property Fund has a fiduciary duty to the many public and private domestic pension plans and other institutional investors which primarily comprise its investors," the statement said. "Prime Property is taking the appropriate action to fulfill its obligations to its investors and to move this project forward with the city of Los Angeles."

The MTA is not involved with the development but hopes to see financial issues resolved, spokesman Marc Littman said. "It would enhance our ridership and hopefully ease traffic in one of the most congested parts of L.A.," he said.

[email protected]

[LACienega]

Originally Posted by edluva

god that's a horrid color scheme. LA continues to amass architectural crap at an alarming rate. and what westsidelife said about other cities having historic buildings as contextual basis is exactly right - LA lacks context, in sense of place or time. It basically lacks an identity. that's partly why we build stupid looking buildings on a regular basis. it's also why famous architects come here to create flops of mediocrity.

What do you guys want?? a masterpiece every time new lofts/townhome's breakground? Money...people...money...were lucky were even seeing many of these rise. At least these parking lots are going away one by one and its not like the whole city of L.A. is being covered with these projects...

[colemonkee]

While I applaud the replacement of a surface parking lot and the residents that Sakura Crossing will inevitably bring to the neighborhood - my neighborhood, I should add - the design is still pretty deplorable. There are many examples of decent to good low rise architecture going up in LA - the Madrone and Larchmont Lofts in Hollywood come to mind. This is just architectural hackery. We're not asking for masterworks every time, but something better would have been preferred.

[edluva]

Originally Posted by LACienega

... its not like the whole city of L.A. is being covered with these projects...

um...i beg to differ.

and i'm not looking for masterpieces either, just decent taste. any semblance of it would be a great change of direction. other cities appear to be able to avoid building eyesore after eyesore. it's curious why LA is so consistent with them. they're not cheap either.

tokyo, london, ny, chicago, sf, paris, berlin, amsterdam, boston, seattle, DC - you'd be hard pressed to find so much ugly architecture in these cities. don't you ever wonder why LA is always the odd "cosmopolitan" out?

[Steve2726]

While you are correct about L.A. and you do raise very valid points, the reality about other cities isn't entirely correct. I can comment specifically on Chicago as a former resident and frequent visitor- Over the last 10 years they have built dozens of ass ugly, cookie cutter, 2-5 story cinder block buildings with frilly red brick facades all over the north, west and south sides. So your implication that L.A. has a monopoly on crappy architecture simply isn't true.

[LACienega]

^^Exactly. I dont know why the claim that other cities aren't constructing ugly architecture was brought up if that is entirely false.

[Just-In-Cali]

I actually have to agree with Steve. I was just up in San Fran in December, and they have the same tacky looking structures going up like weeds all over...from downtown to the suburban parts near Golden Gate Park. Even many were going up next door to the historic old Victorians. Its less of an LA thing and more of a "save costs on the design to reap more profits later" scheme that seems to be consistant worldwide these days. And forgive me if Im wrong, but Tokyo seems to be made of nothing but bland "Rent O Boxes"...hardly a pantheon of architecture.
Ed is right that we should strive for better, but LA cant really be singled out in this regard. My biggest beef with these tasteless "suburban" type structures is that now they will likely be there for 50 years...delaying any chance of something better being built in our lifetimes.

[BrandonJXN]

Originally Posted by edluva

um...i beg to differ.

and i'm not looking for masterpieces either, just decent taste. any semblance of it would be a great change of direction. other cities appear to be able to avoid building eyesore after eyesore. it's curious why LA is so consistent with them. they're not cheap either.

tokyo, london, ny, chicago, sf, paris, berlin, amsterdam, boston, seattle, DC - you'd be hard pressed to find so much ugly architecture in these cities. don't you ever wonder why LA is always the odd "cosmopolitan" out?

I disagree to an extent. While I'm not privy to the goings on in cities overseas, I can say that the type of design that Sakura Crossing (which isn't a terrible design I might ad) is popping up EVERYWHERE. For midrises and highrises alike. Almost every major city has some sort of Vancouver style condo building with balconies everywhere. Examples:

Streets of Buckhead (Atlanta)


Aloft (San Diego)


All of Miami
New Atlantia Miami

6th and Blanchard (Seattle)


National Harbour (DC)


Although DC can only build so high.

It isn't just us. These same types of designs are all over. I do agree with ed that LA could (and should) build higher quality architecture however. But one thing that I wish LA would do above all else is to continue to densify downtown. Look at the corner of 9th and Fig. 4 years ago, nothing was there. But now, what was once a parking lot, now has Hanover, 1 Concerto tower, Concerto's little condo building, and the Fine Arts Building. In the future, it will have the other Concerto tower, AND the FIDM Building. That's 5 buildings on one lot. LA needs more of that seeing as how we have more than enough large parking lots.

[LosAngelesBeauty]

There are definitely examples of designs that are not sub-par to other cities in the US being built in LA. Designs like Concerto (including the mid-rise), 717 Olympic, Ritz Carlton tower, the Margot, Carlyle, The Century, W Hollywood etc. are all quite nice. These are all LA the last time I checked.

[BrandonJXN]

I don't like The Century in it's location. I actually think it's a crappy design. However, as I said many times before, it belongs on Wilshire on that stretch of those 80's style condo towers with the awesome names (The Diplomat, La Tour, The Californian, The Remington, The Mirabella, The Dorchester, The Wilshire).

[Quixote]

From Flickr, by JianG.~

[ladowntowner]

Originally Posted by ThreeHundred

But one thing that I wish LA would do above all else is to continue to densify downtown. Look at the corner of 9th and Fig. 4 years ago, nothing was there. But now, what was once a parking lot, now has Hanover, 1 Concerto tower, Concerto's little condo building, and the Fine Arts Building. In the future, it will have the other Concerto tower, AND the FIDM Building. That's 5 buildings on one lot. LA needs more of that seeing as how we have more than enough large parking lots.

Errr... make that the Variety Arts Center. which has been on that block since 1924. But I knew what you meant and your point is taken.

[Kingofthehill]

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by colemonkee

Little Tokyo Block 8 - Sunday, March 8
Sakura Crossing, formerly known as San Pedro Apartments.

Is that it!?? Fugly.

I hope we're seeing only a prelim version of the sakura apt bldg.

I mean those can't be the bldg's final colors!? And what's with what looks like 3 large, chunky concrete frames around 5 floors' worth of windows, along with what looks like a concrete top hat?

But the ultimate downer about the hood is captured in the following pic, which shows ratty old apt bldgs in the foreground. That's the type of property that often hits me first & stands out the most whenever I'm in DT.

The dive parts of the hood unfortunately still represent far too much of the city, esp since newer devlpt remains comparatively modest & a new trend. One example being the site of the new sakura apt bldg was vacant, or no better than a parking lot, for over 25 yrs.

The hood's reputation of being one big dive, full of deadzones, has hurt the city for yrs & yrs, & so it's hard to know how much of that still overshadows ppl's negative impressions.

I think the average person will look at a fugly new bldg like the sakura & wince. They may stick their finger down their throat too. But they'll at least see a new bldg like that as being a sign of future promise, or of future potential.

When that same person sees the dive parts of LA----80 yr old, & very broken down versions of sakura, if not even originally cheaper & fuglier ones dating back to the early 20th century----they're more likely to say this is depressing! this is not a place I want to call home & hang around in til I'm forced to move!! So bye, bye LA! I'm leaving today!

Originally Posted by Westsidelife

From Flickr, by JianG.~

[BrandonJXN]

Originally Posted by Westsidelife

From Flickr, by JianG.~

Beautiful picture. Despite not getting everything we wanted, I think we did pretty well in the boom before the bust.

Citywatch for heaven's sake you're so unpleasent sometimes. Do you go to orphanages and tell the kids that there's no Santa?

[tmnt mask]

Why do you guys think bringing up ugly architecture in other cities is somehow a defense of L.A.? Pointing to others faults won't mask your own. Beside youre missing edluvas point. While those cities have examples of ugly architecture, they aren't defined by it. L.A., however, is.

[LACienega]

Originally Posted by tmnt mask

Beside youre missing edluvas point. While those cities have examples of ugly architecture, they aren't defined by it. L.A., however, is.

No, I dont think that was the point, and whats your point? We all know that L.A. does not carry the greatest architecture but we also know that L.A. is a very young city. If you want beautiful architecture, go to the historic downtown area and theres dozens of beautiful buildings to gaze at. Unfortunately, since they were abandoned after WWII, a lot of these buildings look run down and nobody is ever really impressed by that area but the revitalization of downtown should change that completely and people will begin to notice what a beautiful downtown Los Angeles has.

One day all these new housing develpments are not even going to be noticeable...its just where people live..so I dont know why people critisize them so much.

[OCtoSD]

Notice how Miami is nearly an empty residential city. In that picture nearly every building except for the Bank of America building is residential. In downtown the opposite is true. Given the difficulty in attracting business now a days, LA's downtown has better potential long run to be commercially important rather than a winter resident for the likes of wealthy Chicogans and New Yorkers. Most of those condos when they are finally sold will only be occupied for part of the year. Having office towers full of people everyday spending money means a better future.