Quote:
Originally Posted by StethJeff
a) It'll always be Library Tower, Sears Tower, and Oakland Coliseum to me. I don't give a crap who paid what for and I can't believe that anyone other than a corporate CEO would get so riled up about "official names."
b) Wilshire Grand finally recreates in LA what's been going on in Asia for years. Glad to see that something of this caliber is finally in our beloved city. With that said, it certainly doesn't displace Library Tower as my favorite LA tower.
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a) to be fair, seeing as I'm not from Los Angeles and didn't acquire an extensive knowledge of skyscrapers until around 2005 via emporis, I've only ever known it as the US Bank Tower
all a matter of perspective my friend.
b) I said exactly the same thing, this reminds me, by design and the appearance of the renderings that it elevates the skyline of Downtown LA to the level of the burgeoning cities of Asia. If any city in the US should have a skyline inspired by the Asian tigers, it's Los Angeles
...as it shouldn't! Even with all the new towers going up in New York, the Empire State remains our quintessential icon. For you guys in LA, it's the Library Tower (that was for you)
and that's a beautiful thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by brudy
As excited as I am about the new tower, this blog post from Yaroslavsky has me more psyched. It's an update on the expo line phase 2. It relates to downtown in that before the new Wilshire Grand is finished, I'll be riding the expo line from downtown to Santa Monica, and people will be able to move a lot more freely east to west. As a web designer, a lot of the jobs are in SM, and I think this will open the work force up to the whole region while not having to drive. I can live downtown, but work out there if I chose.
http://zev.lacounty.gov/blog/expo-2s-ahead-of-the-curve |
This blog post puts everything I've felt about the ongoing maturation of LA as a truly urban city into words. The rapid expansion of the transit system has been nothing short of astounding and inspiring. I'd even go so far as to say that it has done Downtown a service towards making it a vital city center. Los Angeles' downtown, IMO, could only build all its tall skyscrapers without adequate transit for so long before it hit a wall. There's a reason why corporate headquarters are located all over the place in Southern California and not in one centralized locale: how many cars could you really squeeze into one neighborhood before there would be perpetual gridlock?
The timing is telling, the vacancy rate led to a stopping short of construction in the early 90s, right as the city was approaching 30 years without any rail rapid transit. However as the Metrorail system has expanded, vacancy rates have dropped, downtown neighborhoods have reawakened, and construction, at long last, has begun again. I see the Wilshire Grand Tower as both a culmination and a beginning. It tops off the renewed rise of downtwn and Los Angeles as a whole, and has ushered in a new era of tower-building. I expect (and hope) that more skyline-altering towers come in the near future. It's an exciting time.
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