The Grand (Phase 1)| 19 fl | Under Construction

[soup or man]

^ The LAPD Building is under construction.

[redspork02]

Broad stepping down as head of Grand Avenue Committee

The philanthropist says his goal to lead the project through the city and county approval phase is complete.
By Cara Mia DiMassa, Times Staff Writer
March 6, 2007


Philanthropist Eli Broad has announced that he is stepping down as chairman of the citizens group that has steered the $2.05-billion Grand Avenue project since its inception.
The Grand Avenue project, which eventually could include nine acres of retail, housing and office space as well as a 16-acre civic park around Walt Disney Concert Hall on Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles, received approval last month from the city and county.

At a luncheon Monday to honor those involved in the process, Broad said he had wanted to guide the project through city and county approvals before relinquishing control of the Grand Avenue Committee.

"With the development phase beginning, it makes perfect sense," he said.

Broad initially served as co-chairman of the committee and became sole chairman after developer Jim Thomas left the committee two years ago. But it has been Broad's vision that has largely guided the process over the last seven years.

Broad said he hopes to focus on other projects, including his foundation's work on education and healthcare issues. Along with supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, Broad has recently been a bidder for the Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times. "My plate is more than full," Broad said.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa praised Broad for having "vision, persistence, tenacity — the will to move this vision along."

Replacing Broad as chairman will be Nelson Rising, a real estate developer who has served on the committee since 2005. He said the project was transformational for the city of Los Angeles. Still, he told Broad at the meeting, "I have no illusions…. No one can replace you."

The Grand Avenue project is scheduled to break ground in October. But late Friday, the owner of the Westin Bonaventure hotel filed a complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court, asking the court to declare invalid the City Council's and county Board of Supervisors' approval last month of the Grand Avenue project. The hotel contends that the government actions violate the Bunker Hill Redevelopment Plan and provisions of state redevelopment law.

Helen Parker, a lawyer for the county, said attorneys for the agencies and companies named in the suit were reviewing the filing. She said they would have no comment on pending litigation.

[Fern~Fern*]

... such an important project for the future of Downtown L.A.. Shocked no new news are burning up the airwaves and local newspaper!

[redspork02]

In Los Angeles, a Gehry-Designed Awakening
The plan calls for a five-star 275-room Mandarin Oriental Hotel, luxury condominiums, restaurants run by celebrity chefs, and an upscale food market.
From The New York Times
Interior Design · April 23, 2007

LOS ANGELES — The influx of thousands of new residents has reinvigorated this city’s downtown in recent years, but most of the development has been clustered on its southern end, near the Staples Center, the sports and entertainment arena.

For more than a decade, however, Eli Broad, a billionaire and civic leader, has envisioned a vibrant focal point for the city — “a place where people from all communities want to gather,” as he put it — on the opposite edge of downtown. That section, known as Bunker Hill, is home to some of the city’s leading cultural institutions and architecturally significant structures, but they are scattered amid a hodgepodge of unsightly parking lots and drab government buildings.
Now Related Urban, the division of the Related Companies that developed the massive Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, is poised to try to fulfill Mr. Broad’s ambitions. By the end of the year, the company expects to begin demolition for the first phase of a $2.05 billion mixed-use project along Grand Avenue, opposite the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Designed by the concert hall’s architect, Frank Gehry, the Grand Avenue development will echo the Time Warner Center in some respects — the plans call for a five-star 275-room Mandarin Oriental Hotel, luxury condominiums, restaurants run by celebrity chefs and an upscale food market. But it is also expected to feature terraces and rooftop gardens to take advantage of the mild climate, the developers say.

Included in the $750 million first phase, which extends from First to Second Streets and reaches 35 feet from Grand Avenue to Olive Street, are 400 condominiums in two towers, 48 and 24 stories respectively, to be priced at around $1,000 a square foot or higher; 100 apartments devoted to families earning less than $35,000 a year; 284,000 square feet of retail space; and a 16-acre park linking the Music Center and City Hall to replace an unused swath of sloping green space near the government buildings.

As part of an agreement with community groups and public officials, Related Companies is to advance $50 million of its ground-lease rent toward the cost of the park. The agreement also requires Related and its tenants to meet specified hiring and wage goals and to set aside one-fifth of the units for low- and moderate-income residents. In exchange, officials have agreed to just under $100 million in subsidies, principally from hotel tax revenues, said William A. Witte, the president of Related California.

The City Council and County Board of Supervisors recently gave their blessing to the project, and Mr. Gehry said he expects to complete the design in June.

Rather than compete with his concert hall, with its billowing stainless-steel walls, the glassy Grand Avenue development should play a “supporting role,” Mr. Gehry said, adding that “you don’t put a bunch of iconic buildings one next to the other.” With construction costs rising, the architect said he has had to “adjust the project to that reality” by, for example, searching for less-expensive materials.

Unlike the planned Atlantic Yards development near downtown Brooklyn, which is Mr. Gehry’s other major urban project, Grand Avenue has engendered few fireworks. But some opponents maintain that subsidies are not justified for a project intended primarily for wealthy residents. They say the developer is already getting a break on the land.

[Fern~Fern*]

... What's going on with this Mega Project???

It sure is dead as a doornail..... When is it finally going to break ground? What's the final design for Gehry's Signature Tower? Where's the cranes? Why is grand Ave still business as usual when were so close to groundbreaking? Anyone????

[soup or man]

THE END OF THE YEAR for fucks sake. All of the info is in the post above you in Skittles colors.

In case you missed it, loco has it in big pink letters: Now Related Urban, the division of the Related Companies that developed the massive Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, is poised to try to fulfill Mr. Broad’s ambitions. By the end of the year, the company expects to begin demolition for the first phase of a $2.05 billion mixed-use project along Grand Avenue, opposite the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Learn how to be paitent. Goodness.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Ferney, get a grip! youre borderline spamming.

[TICONLA1]

I heard digging to start, oct. 07, i'll stick to that.

[Epicentre]

"THE END OF THE YEAR for fucks sake."

LOL! Classic!

[Fern~Fern*]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

Ferney, get a grip! youre borderline spamming.

Am I getting Banned?

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

not yet

[Buildingfrenzy]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

not yet

Speaking of banned, did Klamedia get banned yes or no? Where they hell is he? HE still has not answered my quote from the City house thread!

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

no he isnt banned. maybe he is busy? i dont know?

[godblessbotox]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

no he isnt banned. maybe he is busy? i dont know?

what! but your the moderator! you are supposed to know everything!!!

[Westsidelife]

Please, can we stay on topic!

[Fern~Fern*]

^ Exactly all this off topic conversation is really un~neccessary.

I can't wait for phase one of Grand Ave to commence. Woohoo!

[soup or man]

The design, complete with L-shaped towers, will be considered by the
Board of Supervisors this morning. (Gehry Partners, LLP)

A Definite Frank Gehry Imprint

The new proposal for Grand Avenue’s first phase has the architect’s trademark loose forms. But will infighting drive him off the project?

By Christopher Hawthorne, Times Staff Writer

Since Frank Gehry was hired nearly two years ago to design a massive mixed-use project along Grand Avenue, he has clashed repeatedly and sometimes bitterly with the developer, New York's Related Cos. Barring some sudden rapprochement, it now seems unlikely that Gehry will return for the planned second and third phases of the project. But the plan, which the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will consider this morning, has turned a significant corner in recent weeks. The latest version suggests it will rise not only as an effective complement to Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall across the street but also as a dramatic architectural presence in its own right.

After bottoming out late last year, when models showed a pair of plain, rectangular office towers largely sealed off from the streets around them, the design has grown richer, more colorful and more reflective of Los Angeles and contemporary culture. The new design includes a pair of L-shaped towers playing energetically against each other — and against the rest of the downtown skyline — and framing a dense, multi-level retail plaza dotted with oak trees and other lush landscaping.

Some of the improvement is the natural result of the design gaining detail as it moves from concept toward groundbreaking this fall. But far more than previous versions, this one displays the loose, exuberant forms for which Gehry is known — and which, presumably, he was brought on to provide. Still, Gehry appears to be loosening his ties to the development. Reversing an earlier demand that his firm fully control the design of the first phase, he has agreed to let Dallas-based HKS Architects produce the final working drawings that will guide construction. His handpicked landscape architect, Laurie Olin, has left the project.

The architectural progress of the first phase, now budgeted at roughly $900 million, is a reminder that some of Gehry's best buildings, including the long-delayed Disney Hall, have been the result not just of sustained give-and-take between architect and client but also of substantial uncertainty. Far from a creative genius producing idiosyncratic forms in isolation, as he is sometimes portrayed, Gehry is an architect who thrives on drama and even brinksmanship. This project, from the beginning, has had no shortage of those elements; where they have been lacking, Gehry has sometimes worked to create them.

Although the budget for the first phase remains tight, it has loosened enough in recent months to allow the architect and his chief collaborator on the project, Craig Webb, a bit of creative wiggle room. The architects have given the taller, 48-story tower, which will contain a Mandarin Oriental Hotel along with a health club and high-end condominiums, more personality than it has shown since the earliest renderings. It is now cloaked in an undulating façade of mirrored glass that at several points pulls away dramatically from a boxy structural shell underneath.


The taller tower draws some inspiration from the
two mirrored glass skyscrapers at nearby Califor-
nia Plaza. (Gehry Partners, LLP)

In shaping the tower, Gehry and Webb say they are reaching back in part to the skyscraper designs of Kevin Roche, particularly Roche's U.N. Plaza, finished in 1975 on the east side of Manhattan. But the inspiration is also local. The tower design represents an architectural bridge between Disney Hall and the two mirrored-glass skyscrapers that make up Arthur Erickson's nearby California Plaza. This sense of local connection — an idiosyncratic spin on the idea of architectural context — is precisely what's missing in other Related projects, such as the Time Warner Center in Manhattan. For Gehry, the most effective kind of contextualism is surprising and energetic rather than dutiful — riffing on nearby buildings instead of copying them. That's the approach he's taken here, and it will make the tower — if built in its present form — the most compelling vertical form on the downtown skyline.

The guidelines of the Community Redevelopment Agency, however, include a recommendation against using any kind of reflective glass, which can cause glare. (Gehry ran into problems with glare at Disney Hall.) Yet strange as it might sound, given the banal reputation of the material, losing the mirrored glass would be a significant setback at this stage architecturally. At the same time, the architects have made the smaller, 24-story tower, which will hold a mixture of market-rate and subsidized apartments, more distinct in its own right, adding fixed window boxes to its facades along 1st and Olive streets. The boxes, which Gehry has used in European projects, would help give some character and life to the outside of the tower.

Perhaps the most surprising new element in new models is the decorative pattern that Gehry has added to the tower facades overlooking the plaza — the inside faces of each L. The pattern would take the lush landscaping growing out of the retail pavilions and, as a visual motif, extend it vertically into the sky. It could connect the project not only to the history of murals downtown but also to the nascent revival of ornament in the architecture and design worlds. The pattern, a floral design blown up to skyscraper scale, is something of a placeholder and needs refinement.

The idea of pulling the landscaping up into the air is topped off, literally, in the current design by live oak trees on the roofs of both towers. Though Gehry says he isn't aware of the reference, the gesture recalls the medieval Guinigi Tower, in the Italian town of Lucca, which is also crowned by spreading oak trees. With Olin having left the project, the job of refining those and other landscape elements has fallen to Nancy Goslee Power, who runs a landscape firm in Santa Monica and collaborated a decade ago with Gehry on the renovation of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. Related officials insist Power's job will be to flesh out, not recast, Olin's scheme.

At the plaza level, meanwhile, the design has made significant progress. Behind the free-standing retail pavilions along Grand rises a dense multi-level collection of shops and terraces. This effectively creates a kind of urban hillside: a third architectural presence with enough height and size to compete with the towers on either side. At sidewalk level along 1st, 2nd and Olive streets, the models now show a loosely stacked collection of geometric forms. Large, brightly colored concrete panels (where other Related projects might use impressive-looking stone) alternate with expanses of glass and punched-through openings for pedestrians or cars. The retail pavilions themselves, topped with colored-glass sunshades, suggest a dense interplay between closed-off and open-air spaces, between informality and refinement.

It's still not clear which retailers will fill those pavilions. Related has been hoping that an Apple computer store will occupy the most important retail corner, at Grand Avenue and 1st Street. But Related and Gehry say Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, is interested in putting the same kind of sleek cube on that corner that he has used for other high-profile Apple stores. Since Gehry hates that idea, Apple may wind up in another downtown development.

The overall design has yet to solve some of its most stubborn problems. It is not as open in the direction of Broadway — and, in general, to the south and east — as it should be. The façade along Olive Street is still getting the back-of-house treatment. On top of that, the diverse mixture of forms, materials and colors that Gehry is using here as a means of disguising the project's bulk remains something of a gamble. In general, Gehry's most successful recent designs have used a limited, monochromatic material palette — steel panels for Disney Hall, titanium for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain — to temper their energetic forms.

And with the details of the commercial block still consuming so much of Related's energy, planning for the project's 16-acre park, which will run downhill from the Music Center to City Hall, continues to lag. A team headed by Mark Rios, who has quietly taken the lead on the park, is expected to unveil a preliminary design this fall.

There are those in this city who lament that we've pinned too many of our collective hopes on the Grand Avenue development. Certainly it would be a mistake to expect that when it's built it will feel anything like the beating heart of Los Angeles, or, to borrow Eli Broad's phrase, like our Champs-Élysées. But the project has proven to be a fascinating measuring stick for the emerging public-private partnership model of urban development. It has provided a remarkable late-career test for the 78-year-old Gehry, who understands that it will help shape his legacy — particularly as an architect so closely associated with Los Angeles — but who has grown accustomed to generous budgets and deferential clients.

And it would be a mistake to reject outright the idea that a commercial plaza thick with pricey shops can tell us something meaningful about the future of shared space in this city. Los Angeles is familiar with the notion of playing out public life in the private realm: Look at Universal CityWalk, or the Grove. In that sense, compared with those retail projects or the aloof California Plaza, the Grand Avenue project represents at least a tentative step by commercial forces back in the direction of substantial engagement with cities and city-making. Gehry and Related deserve credit for gamely challenging the notion that high-end retail spaces have to embrace either an old-fashioned or a numbingly sleek form of urbanism.

The most important question going forward is how Related officials will judge the architecture of the first phase. They may view it as an encouraging sign of what real architecture can bring to a development, in buzz and urban character as well as in sales. But it's also possible that they'll see their tumultuous experience with Gehry primarily as a cautionary tale — a bullet dodged — and move forward convinced that the risks they have taken so far aren't worth repeating.

[saiholmes]

Cool!

[soup or man]

Board OKs Grand Design

Work could begin in fall

BY TROY ANDERSON, Staff Writer
LA Daily News, 06/19/2007

Anticipating a futuristic 48-story tower near the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles County supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to approve schematic design drawings for the first phase of the $2 billion Grand Avenue project. Bill Witte, president of The Related Cos. of California, said the designs call for the tower to be designed by architect Frank Gehry and feature reflective, undulating glass. They also call for a second, 25-story tower with a more "sober, traditional design."

With approval of the drawings, construction on the project designed to transform the downtown skyline -- and create a vibrant heart for the city with entertainment venues, restaurants, a hotel and a 16-acre park -- is expected to begin in October.

"As you look at the model, you can see something that is very dynamic," Supervisor Gloria Molina said. "There is no other area in downtown like this."

Supporters of the project say it will revitalize downtown with 3.6 million square feet of development, including more than 2,000 condominiums and retail stores. But Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich has repeatedly voted against the project, estimating $176 million in tax breaks and subsidies will be needed.

Tuesday, Antonovich questioned Witte about clashes between the architect and developer over the designs, why no bookstore or supermarket had signed up to lease space, whether potential glare from the buildings had been addressed and how officials will address concerns by court officials over the lack of parking. Witte said he's never worked on a project where architects didn't clash with developers. "Not only has it not hindered us, but the end product is probably much better because of the back and forth," Witte said.

It's still too early in the process for major retailers like bookstores and grocery stores to sign letters of intent to lease space, he added. And he said the firm that conducted a glare study on Disney Hall is studying the best materials to use on the towers to reduce reflections from the sun.

Antonovich said downtown parking for court workers and jurors was not enough. This could result, he said, in jurors having to park farther away and causing trial delays. "We are talking about people who are not necessarily active members at the neighborhood gym, and considering the type of geography this facility is located on in the hills, it's not convenient for some of the older people," he said.

He also raised concerns that court officials have no plans to replace the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, located between the proposed 16-acre park and the county Hall of Administration. Chief Executive Officer David Janssen said replacing the courthouse would cost $700 million to $800 million, but it's not on a state priority list.

"The cost to replace the courthouse and county hall will exceed $1 billion," Antonovich said.

Janssen said the county has set aside $100 million to replace the county hall. A location for the new county hall could be the existing Court of Flags off Hill Street. The supervisors have until next summer to decide whether to replace the hall, which was damaged in the Northridge Earthquake.

[godblessbotox]

yippy!