LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 6.0

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by headcheckjj

45 storys at 592 feet, according to this: https://urbanize.city/la/post/taller-terraced-design-unveiled-8th-and-hope-tower

I forgot about that one completely lol. I thought it died or something.

[headcheckjj]

Originally Posted by LA21st

I forgot about that one completely lol. I thought it died or something.

My assumption was that Mitsui Fudosan America is doing 8th and Fig first, and then they'll do this one next. But, who knows? Can anyone confirm or deny this?

[citywatch]

I think colemonkee edits this forum, so I hope he won't mind if I slip this in here. sorry, yes, I know this isn't about dtla. But I think it's relevant because SSPers tend to treat NYC as a lesson in how to create an ideal urban setting....so this kind of shocks me.

As for dtla, it proves that any urban area can bounce back, at least if given enough time. So nyc will eventually return to normalcy, but it will take x number of months, x number of yrs. However, I read that retail vacancy was starting to become more noticeable in parts of manhattan even before 2020.

but think of how parts of dtla, such as the upper floors of bldgs on broadway, have been similar to what this person is showing on the east coast. And swapmeets haven't been as common in NYC as they've been in dtla. Still, seeing a variation of it in nyc is somehow more disturbing. In turn, dtla, among the major urban places of the US, doesn't seem quite as much of an outlier as it has in the past.

this also is also a form of penance for some of my posts that focused on dtla's bad ol past. Or to show the grass isn't necessarily as green on the other side as one would assume....


• Video Link


UPDATE: I've watched other vids from that person, one from yesterday, & he has walked all over manhattan, from the north to south.....it's very shaky all over!....more recently too. He showed a subway station in one of the most prestigious parts of NYC, which serves a lot of upscale business ppl. He showed how rundown it is.....NYC's subway system is very extensive & runs circles around LA's. But it's obviously much older & very seedy. He said after he stopped using it & started riding a bike, he noticed he was less depressed.

Graffiti is EVERYWHERE in NYC. Vacant stores there aren't just sad because they're lifeless, but just about everyone one of them is covered in graffiti.

dtla's skid row is regrettably unique to LA, & the homeless problem in NYC isn't as bad or concentrated as it is in dtla. But the New yorker noted that ppl pay very high rents in various parts of manhattan & have to walk downstairs to see ppl peeing near their bldg's front door.

nyc has a scale that dwarfs dtla by 50 times over....but it now makes me think that dtla isn't quite the underachiever as it has traditionally been....if only because it's better than it was 40 yrs ago....so forget how it compares with other urban areas.

I'm going to add this here because even though the devlpr of projs like this one has very bad taste, he creates parts of dtla that at least have a friendlier, mediterranean vibe lacking in nyc. I'm so shaken up by what I've seen on the east coast, that even the kitschy projs of Geoff palmer now don't seem quite so embarrassing.


• Video Link

[citywatch]

Palmer, owner of 7 cloned apt bldgs in dt - with the 8th proj on broadway having to look different due to design codes - has hired his architect to build a huge model of his newest devlpt, now rising west of the 110 fwy on the other side of the water & power & LA county health bldgs. It's where the BofA data center, built in the late 1970s, used to be....





I looked at all his various bldgs in dt, & just about all of them appear to have fairly high occupancy rates.....only the one north of Temple, closer to chinatown, has a somewhat higher vacancy rate. I've read it has had problems in the past with crime, car break ins, burglaries. But I believe what's true of those apt projs are similar for the other apt bldgs in dtla....so it's totally not what I suspected would happen when the pandemic hit last yr.

NYC is the same way....I've read that apts there are being snapped up again....so all the vacant stores in that city aren't due to a lack of demand or nearby customers, but the economics & govt in manhattan....financial institutions apparently are forcing leasing rates to remain very high because if the legal value of commercial bldgs in NYC is lowered, that will cause a domino effect for the owners, banks, investors, leasing agents. NY's city govt also depends on the higher value of those bldgs in order to keep the taxes at current levels. It's a vicious cycle.

this is the pool area of the newest apt bldg in dtla, the one right next to the fwy. as it was being built, it burned down in 2014 a few wks before xmas. When I drive by it, the tenants in its west facing units are so close to the fwy, they can just about can hold a conversation with drivers in bumper to bumper traffic. But at least the inner pool area is heavily landscaped....it has a sunny weather look that helps give dtla a different vibe than certain other cities.

[hughfb3]

Originally Posted by citywatch

UPDATE: I've watched other vids from that person, one from yesterday, & he has walked all over manhattan, from the north to south.....it's very shaky all over!....more recently too. He showed a subway station in one of the most prestigious parts of NYC, which serves a lot of upscale business ppl. He showed how rundown it is.....NYC's subway system is very extensive & runs circles around LA's. But it's obviously much older & very seedy. He said after he stopped using it & started riding a bike, he noticed he was less depressed.

Graffiti is EVERYWHERE in NYC. Vacant stores there aren't just sad because they're lifeless, but just about everyone one of them is covered in graffiti.

dtla's skid row is regrettably unique to LA, & the homeless problem in NYC isn't as bad or concentrated as it is in dtla. But the New yorker noted that ppl pay very high rents in various parts of manhattan & have to walk downstairs to see ppl peeing near their bldg's front door.

You bring up a good point here. Back when Los Angeles hired William Bratton; who was the Police Commissioner in New York City, to be our Chief of Police, one of his biggest successes was due to the implementation of the "Broken Windows Theory" that he created a whole strategy around in both NYC and Los Angeles. This was the theory of if there is a broken window somewhere, that crime will increase just by the sight of it. Same thing with unauthorized tagging.

He went to town on both cities and made it a priority to have all broken windows fixed and graffiti removed, which led to a decrease in petty and violent crime in both cities under his tenure. This is when NYC finally got rid of all the unauthorized graffiti tags on the subway trains and shop-front security gates. In Los Angeles, this is when LA was finally able to clean up DTLA (2002-2009) enough for it to go mainstream and have "career-focused/professional" people actually DESIRE to live there. Since he's left Los Angeles, I havent seen this be a priority for the Police department, and especially since COVID, I think all that went out the window. I just hope that our current Police Chief looks at what was successful and brings it back into existence because we are way off that path right now!

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by hughfb3

Since he's left Los Angeles, I havent seen this be a priority for the Police department, and especially since COVID, I think all that went out the window. I just hope that our current Police Chief looks at what was successful and brings it back into existence because we are way off that path right now!

the same thing is happening throughout the country, from coast to coast. Cities are both very resilient but also vulnerable to downturns too....it's the cycle of up & down. I think of how dtla was in a mainly down cycle for decades, starting from the early 1950s, even 1920s, right through most of the 20th century. Most economists would describe that as a major depression.

dtla shows that places can be both very weak but also very resilient...it's just a matter of time.

NYC was in bad shape in the 1970s when millions of ppl moved out of it....then it came roaring back....in some ways, it then started to outshine even its own history. I've become so accustomed to that image of NYC, that the videos of it today really throw me for a loop.....that youtuber, however, did a recent walk around times square & it's coming back....way more ppl than when it was a pademic ghost toww....most of its stores are leased & operating.

But the video maker named louis rossman walked a few blocks beyond times sq to a non touristy area where smaller store owners exist....more vacancies started to appear. NYC is becoming closer to an open air version of struggling indoor shopping malls.

speaking of sad commercial indoor malls, this used to be one of them...before they tore its roof off, opened it up. It was the macys plaza, formerly broadway plaza, & was as lifeless or depressing as they come....


• Video Link


this is it's bad 'ol past.....If I got stuck in a time machine & had to go back to the 1970s, I'd feel pretty downbeat....that's because I'd know that dtla would be in fairly weak shape for decades into the future from 1971 onward....

• Video Link

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by citywatch

I think colemonkee edits this forum, so I hope he won't mind if I slip this in here. sorry, yes, I know this isn't about dtla. But I think it's relevant because SSPers tend to treat NYC as a lesson in how to create an ideal urban setting....so this kind of shocks me.

As for dtla, it proves that any urban area can bounce back, at least if given enough time. So nyc will eventually return to normalcy, but it will take x number of months, x number of yrs. However, I read that retail vacancy was starting to become more noticeable in parts of manhattan even before 2020.

but think of how parts of dtla, such as the upper floors of bldgs on broadway, have been similar to what this person is showing on the east coast. And swapmeets haven't been as common in NYC as they've been in dtla. Still, seeing a variation of it in nyc is somehow more disturbing. In turn, dtla, among the major urban places of the US, doesn't seem quite as much of an outlier as it has in the past.

this also is also a form of penance for some of my posts that focused on dtla's bad ol past. Or to show the grass isn't necessarily as green on the other side as one would assume....


• Video Link


UPDATE: I've watched other vids from that person, one from yesterday, & he has walked all over manhattan, from the north to south.....it's very shaky all over!....more recently too. He showed a subway station in one of the most prestigious parts of NYC, which serves a lot of upscale business ppl. He showed how rundown it is.....NYC's subway system is very extensive & runs circles around LA's. But it's obviously much older & very seedy. He said after he stopped using it & started riding a bike, he noticed he was less depressed.

Graffiti is EVERYWHERE in NYC. Vacant stores there aren't just sad because they're lifeless, but just about everyone one of them is covered in graffiti.

dtla's skid row is regrettably unique to LA, & the homeless problem in NYC isn't as bad or concentrated as it is in dtla. But the New yorker noted that ppl pay very high rents in various parts of manhattan & have to walk downstairs to see ppl peeing near their bldg's front door.

nyc has a scale that dwarfs dtla by 50 times over....but it now makes me think that dtla isn't quite the underachiever as it has traditionally been....if only because it's better than it was 40 yrs ago....so forget how it compares with other urban areas.

I'm going to add this here because even though the devlpr of projs like this one has very bad taste, he creates parts of dtla that at least have a friendlier, mediterranean vibe lacking in nyc. I'm so shaken up by what I've seen on the east coast, that even the kitschy projs of Geoff palmer now don't seem quite so embarrassing.


• Video Link

There's some big NYC boosters on this forum, but NYC reddit is much more honest about the covid situation. The NYC boosters here (like Chicago) try to pretend everything is fine compared to LA and made those comments .
I've been to Chicago this year, it's not the same. I love Chicago, but some of these Chicagoans are kidding themselves.
I'm guessing this video is the truth about NYC these days.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by LA21st

I've been to Chicago this year, it's not the same. I love Chicago, but some of these Chicagoans are kidding themselves.
I'm guessing this video is the truth about NYC these days.

Cities throughout the world are in a shaky moment right now, some more than others. I've seen vids of London & Paris, & vacant stores & unhappy ppl are way more of an issue there today than before.

Ppl in paris were even camped out having picnics on the sidewalk in front of restaurants on a major street in that city....they were protesting laws that ban them from entering cafes & shops without vaccine passports....it's crazy what's going on throughout the US & world.

In more positive news....this person shows one of the newest rooftop hangouts in dtla, the area built on the top of the wayfarer hotel on flower st, a block south of macys. She also went into a coffee place across the street from, south of macys plaza. It's in the ground floor of an apt bldg where a parking lot used to be not too many yrs ago... one thing about dtla, more parts of it do have less foot traffic than various other cities had before the pandemic & even after it.


• Video Link


UPDATE: Wasn't too long ago when this was a big dead parking lot next to the fwy...it wasn't too long ago when the idea of a staycation in dtla would make way more ppl go "huh"?

South of that is the block of land where the olympia proj has been proposed for....the land I'm glad they cleared off....you can see a small part of it when this youtuber points his cam towards 9th st.

what's going on with the indigo hotel & other hotels in dtla is a big concern. Travelers, tourism & conventions have been squashed throughout America & the world over the past 17 months.....that's a huge loss of business & customers.

• Video Link


You can see two other new hotels in dtla in converted old office bldgs on the southern edge of broadway, near the renovated herald examiner bldg....there's also the Broadway palace apt bldgs owned by geoff palmer...nearby is a small eatery named matte black across the street.....the reopened tower theater is now an apple store....work is going on with the globe theater bldg.....pershing sq now doesn't have a deadzone parking lot to the north where the park fifth apt towers now exists....but don't know how hotels like the Biltmore are doing in the era of covid.

this walk would have been as depressing, if not more bleak, not too many yrs ago....it's still a work in progress. But after looking at videos made by the guy in NYC, I didn't think there would be a day when I'd say his strolling through various major parts of manhattan would seem more depressing than what walking down southern broadway or around 5th & spring of dtla has been like in the past.

If you can make it in dtla, you can make it anywhere....that's because few urban areas have gone as far downhill as central LA did. So time for a change....& not a second too soon


• Video Link

[citywatch]

Another reason why the travel, tourist, visitor, convention & meeting business is so important to areas like dtla:

https://urbanize.city/la/post/look-inside-dtlas-new-citizenm-hotel


urbanize.city, hunter kerhart



urbanize.city, hunter kerhart



urbanize.city, hunter kerhart

there are 2 new hotels in renovated old bldgs on broadway yet to formally open several blocks to the south of this one, the cambria across the street from citizenM, the existing nomad hotel in the old giannini bldg, the freeman hotel in the old commercial exchange bldg, along with the bonaventure, the biltmore, the recently renovated wayfarer hotel on flower, the grand wilshire, the hotels around LA live, the new hotel going up on fig next to the circa apt bldgs, the hilton doubletree in little toyko, the new hotel conrad hilton going up across from disney hall, etc.

Most cities depend on travelers, meetings & conventions to keep their economies going and urban centers active.

EDIT: totally forgot about this one. Didn't care for it much in the past because it looks like on 3 of its 4 sides a low cost bldg from the early 1920s....It has long stood out mainly because of the huge ads painted on its south & north sides. For the past few decades, it was an odd Moroccan themed hotel for budget conscious customers. Now it's one of the great parts of dtla & its west side has been painted with a huge mural of flowers. however, it's still surrounded by lifeless parking lots....it isn't too far from the one where the Olympia proj is supposed to go up.

there's also the hotel that's part of the oceanwide proj a few blocks away, still unfinished 4 yrs since construction began on it. there's a lot of money & economics riding on the hotel & convention industries in dtla.


• Video Link

[craigs]

The Hotel Figueroa was built as a YWCA. The SF Chronicle travel writer did a report on it this week, I'll see if I can find a link.

[colemonkee]

Once that Cambria Hotel opens up on Spring, you'll have two new hotels in the area which was pretty starved for hotels for the last 30 years or so. Now, if we can only have somethign built on the surface lot directly north of the Cambria, and directly west of Citizen M.

[citywatch]

^ That part of dtla used to be no man's land, as hopeless as any area could be. So to see things like the citizen m & cambria being added around there is very gratifying.

I recall when the el dorado bldg across from the future cambria & catercorner from the citizen was an abandoned mess. That entire section of spring st & dtla was quite an urban disaster. No other major city in america & world was in as sad a shape as dt was....that's why if dtla can be revived, any other city can be salvaged too.

but now the pandemic is stressing out all the moving parts of LA & elsewhere. I hope the hotel, travel businesses in dt can stablize the restaurant type businesses so not everything is overly dependent on ppl in apts & condos.


• Video Link


businesses like this one must be very hard pressed by what's going on....the restaurants in its namesake city in europe are taking a pounding too right now.

I've read that certain key restaurants in dtla have closed over the past 15 months.....hope that can be turned around before it's too late.


• Video Link

[LAisthePlace]

[QUOTE=citywatch;9391728] I hope the hotel, travel businesses in dt can stablize the restaurant type businesses so not everything is overly dependent on ppl in apts & condos.

I think this is incredibly key for the next few years. As mentioned earlier in the thread - when I looked at apartments about a month ago they were all 95%+ leased and now moving in it seems the residential base of DTLA is as strong as its ever been on my previous many visits from West LA.

That being said, I don't see tons of people in suits as I walk to Bunker Hill, Financial District, et al., and while leisure travel looks to be recovering, business + convention travel still seems far ways off (not just for DTLA but for all urban cores).

Moving past anecdotes, the always excellent DCBID quarterly report is out - https://downtownla.com/business/reports-and-research/market-report

My takeaways:
-Residential occupancy is as strong as its been since 2018 with ~90% occupancy even with all the new supply that has come online. Residential asking rent PSF has actually increased since Q22020 showing strong demand. We also saw ~3x more condo sales this quarter than Q2 2020.
-Office vacancy (not surprisingly) has increased from ~15% in 2019 to ~19% in Q2. We still saw a QoQ increase in vacancy, unfortunately, likely as leases end.
-Hotel RevPar has stabilized from lows in 2020 and even increased 2x from the lowest point, but is still ~1/3 of where we were at in 2019. Occupancy is around ~42%.
-Retail vacancy is flat YoY at ~7%. Just walking around I am noticing a ton of really nicely re-done ground floor retail spaces, so hopefully those start filling up.

Looking forward - We still have a whopping 4.5K units under construction with another 31K proposed. Future still looks super bright with some semi-promising signs right now.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by craigs

The Hotel Figueroa was built as a YWCA. The SF Chronicle travel writer did a report on it this week, I'll see if I can find a link.

here it is....if you hadn't mentioned it I wouldn't have known a new article coincided with my thinking about that hotel yesterday...it's quite a long article too with many pics....much more detailed than what I thought would be just a travel puff piece.

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/Los-Angeles-Hotel-Figueroa-Southern-California-16431998.php

sfgate.com

By the time I showed up at the Fig, nearly a century after it first opened its doors, I was so eager to reclaim some semblance of my pre-pandemic life, I probably would have fallen in love with anywhere that wasn't the place I'd spent nearly every minute of the previous 15 months. But the Hotel Figueroa won me over on its merits. It was engrossing. Between the art, compelling and quirky and seeming to occupy every odd wall, and the artfulness of its design, I felt as if I could spend days reading in the Fig's lobby, wandering its corridors, and sprawled in the sun poolside. I wanted more than one night.

As I sat at the hotel’s bar that evening, my back to its coffin-shaped pool, enjoying some of the best people-watching west of the Mississippi, I couldn’t help but feel like the YWCA’s spirit somehow remained. I relished my aloneness. It was just me, a suspiciously solitary woman, my notebook and a mezcal cocktail.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by LAisthePlace

That being said, I don't see tons of people in suits as I walk to Bunker Hill, Financial District, et al., and while leisure travel looks to be recovering, business + convention travel still seems far ways off (not just for DTLA but for all urban cores).

Yes, what's going on is an international phenomenon....some of the things I'm reading about other cities, including ones like paris, sydney, chicago, london, NYC, is very disturbing....but dtla has been at this rodeo before. So it's nothing new for us in LA....but demand for urban housing in apts & condos, post 2020, has been surprising. I hope there are silver linings elsewhere too.

[Easy]

Lightstone has indeed topped out. I think that it's slightly taller than Circa.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases...s-in-downtown-los-angeles-301373038.html

[craigs]

Ah, thanks. I anticipated I'd have free time much earlier today than I did. It's an interesting article that, more than anything, gets at how a lot of non-Angelenos still romanticize this place. Maybe even some of us still do, as well.

That is a strength our local institutions and businesses should leverage.

Originally Posted by citywatch

here it is....if you hadn't mentioned it I wouldn't have known a new article coincided with my thinking about that hotel yesterday...it's quite a long article too with many pics....much more detailed than what I thought would be just a travel puff piece.

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/Los-Angeles-Hotel-Figueroa-Southern-California-16431998.php

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by LAisthePlace

That is big news. One of the classiest towers currently proposed IMO.

^^^

Like the design, not just another box. Setbacks add visual interest, and more important, allow for outdoor sky gardens, pools, sitting and meeting areas, restaurants, etc. on the setback levels. Build it!!

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by citywatch

It's not so much that I favor parking lots to good things, as much as I don't don't want a cityscape that's hard on the eyes. But, yes, ppl rate & judge things differently, so what's good to one person is bad to another....& visa versa. Some ppl say that bunker hill, which got me to start thinking about this subj again, should have been preserved, while I disagree.

However, LA....dtla in particular....has a long history of ppl not warming up to it. They'll say they like the city's weather or beaches, but not too many ppl who live in or visit LA have wanted to sing versions of, 'I left my heart in dtla'.

I think that's mainly because so much of this is not exactly all that easy on the eyes....



pinterest.com


^ when i see that, taken around 1970, I have a better understanding of why the road to recovery for dt has taken so long & been so rocky....or why the center of LA went downhill quite far to begin with.... starting over 60-70-80 yrs ago. You can see the cleared away part of bunker hill.....dt might have seemed less tired if the area we've been dealing with in these past few posts had been cleared away too, beyond just the land for the convention ctr.

I'm sure you aren't including all the wonderful historic buildings that have such character in your "clearing away", just those ugly buildings and parking lots down around the convention center. But it is important to remember that many people worked and resided (and still do) in these lowrise factories, shops and residences, so that must be considered before removing something that is considered "ugly".

Many of the 1890s-1920s gems have thankfully been preserved and now been restored and repurposed. We lost a few gems, like the Richfield tower, but many are left (Eastern Columbia, etc. etc.) and they give a historic vitality to the core, especially along streets like Broadway, Spring and 7th. DTLA has a wonderful mix of old and new, like NYC, SF, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston and Chicago. I like the new also, but completely leveling Bunker Hill was probably a mistake. A vigorous pruning of the decrepit might have been better than a leveling. It is only now coming together again, although a busy streetscape still is a work in progress. Perhaps a distant pipe dream, but a less brutal and more thoughtful "urban renewal" (bulldozing) of Bunker Hill could have kept some of the Victorian blocks and structures intact for repair, in an ideal case giving some of the area a Nob Hill-like vibe. A few of the better Victorians were carted off to a place called Heritage Square. Are they still there? But they were pretty rundown and not appreciated in the 1950s, but so was West Adams back then. Now look at it....great old houses and neighborhood. A mix of the old and new is best, and thankfully much of DTLA remains that. Cities that appreciate and preserve the best of their historic neighborhoods and buildings alongside the new are better for it.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by CaliNative

I'm sure you aren't including all the wonderful historic buildings that have such character in your "clearing away", just those ugly buildings and parking lots down around the convention center. But it is important to remember that many people worked and resided (and still do) in these lowrise factories, shops and residences, so that must be considered before removing something that is considered "ugly".

I have nostalgia for the good parts of old LA, such as the atlantic richfield oil bldg or the bradbury mansion on bunker hill, lost in the 1920s. But I don't over romanticize old LA either, dt or otherwise.

The city has historically not made many of its residents or visitors write 'i left my heart' type songs or 'i love NYC' type mottos for it. There's a reason for that....ppl tend to feel better about things that impress or look nice.

this is a newer version of a film from the 1940s of bunker hill & a video of the same route taken since the grand ave proj started rising...


• Video Link


Bunker hill today may not be perfect, but no way do I want the area as it was over 40-70 yrs ago. If ppl feel too much the other way, they tend to become nimbys.