DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES: News and Updates

[dragonsky]

Amid Slowdown, Grand Avenue Plans Change
Officials Look at New, Short-Term Project for Part of Bunker Hill Site
by Anna Scott, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Downtown News
Published: Friday, December 4, 2009 3:24 PM PST

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - Although the glitzy $3 billion plan to erect condominiums and retail on Grand Avenue on Bunker Hill remains stalled, a city official said last week that a new, smaller development on part of the site is moving forward.

“I’m looking at one of the parcels for a short-term project,” said City Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose Ninth District includes the Grand Avenue site. “It is a more immediate project.”

Perry would not divulge any details about what the new project would encompass or even who would develop it. More information will likely be revealed at a meeting of the Grand Avenue Authority (the city-county agency overseeing the Grand Avenue development), tentatively scheduled for Dec. 14, Perry said.

Perry also indicated that there might be other changes to the multi-phase mega project, formally titled The Grand, being developed by the New York-based Related Companies.

“It’s impossible to predict the future, but I’m guessing they may have to rethink their plan for [phasing] it in, while preserving the elements we agreed upon,” Perry said. “Whether it’s condos or apartments remains to be seen.”

Related West Coast President Bill Witte, when asked about potential changes to the timeline or other aspects of the project, said, “There’s a lot of stuff being talked about right now. I can only say it wasn’t Related that precipitated this discussion.”

Witte confirmed that a new, short-term project is in the works for part of the Grand Avenue site, but also would not reveal any details or say whether Related will develop it.

Changing Times

The Frank Gehry-designed Grand Avenue project was originally expected to break ground in October 2007.

The $1 billion, 1.3 million-square-foot first phase of The Grand would bring a 48-story Mandarin Oriental Hotel & Residences with 295 hotel rooms and 266 condominiums, a 19-story tower with 126 market-rate apartments and 98 affordable residences, a 250,000-square-foot retail pavilion and a 16-acre Civic Park.

Subsequent phases would bring more than 2,000 additional housing units, a grocery store and health club, and would nearly double the amount of retail in the project. The entire development is slated to occupy 3.6 million square feet of space across from Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The project was initiated by the Grand Avenue Committee, a public-private partnership formed in 2000 and chaired by Maguire Properties CEO Nelson Rising and philanthropist Eli Broad. The Grand Avenue Authority, which includes city, county and Community Redevelopment Agency officials, oversees the project.

The Civic Park, budgeted for the $56 million that Related has already paid the county for its ground lease on the site, is expected to break ground next summer, Witte said. The rest of the project is on hold as the developer waits out the frozen lending markets to obtain a $700 million construction loan.

That could still be a long wait, experts say, as projects based on selling high-priced condominiums have been largely derailed by the crash of the housing market.

“Condo prices everywhere have dropped dramatically and on the… spreadsheets they use to project out the value of these projects, they don’t make sense anymore,” said attorney Eric Rowen of Greenberg Traurig LLP, who handles litigation involving real estate financing. He emphasized that he is not specifically familiar with The Grand’s financials.

Difficult Months

The Grand has in recent months seen potential signs of slowing momentum.

In September, architect Martha Welborne announced that she would leave her post as managing director of the Grand Avenue Committee to join the L.A. office of the Portland-based architectural firm ZGF.

Welborne said the move was natural with The Grand on hold. She will continue to oversee the development of the Civic Park through the end of the year.

“In January, it will be nine years that I’ve spent on this project,” said Welborne. “I’ve given it my all. It’s very hard to predict when the development side might come back, but I need to predict my salary, so it was time to move on.”

As for whether plans might have to change for the project, she said last week, “The position I’m in, I can’t speculate on that.”

In late November Dubai World, the parent company of Grand Avenue investor Istithmar — a sovereign fund controlled by the royal family of Dubai that put $100 million into the project — began talks with banks to restructure $26 billion of debt. Witte said the troubles at Dubai World will not impact The Grand.

“We pretty much spent all the money we need to get ready, including their money,” he said. “As far as we know, there’s no material effect on us.”

Still, in order to break ground before The Grand’s entitlements expire in 2011, Perry said, “I think it would be incumbent upon Related to come back to us with proposals that would reflect the elements we think are important and possibly look at different staging based on economic indicators.”

That, she said, might mean a short-term development strategy as well as a long-term plan.

http://www.ladowntownnews.com/articl...6822331639.txt

[pesto]

I'm thinking a Christmas tree lot and some Christmas tamales.

[dragonsky]

LA's crime rate dips to lowest rate in 50 years; homicides down more than 18 percent
By Associated Press
12:57 PM PST, January 6, 2010

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Authorities say the 2009 crime rate in Los Angeles was the lowest in 50 years, with drops reported in everything from homicides to car thefts.

Police Chief Charlie Beck said Wednesday the number of homicides dropped more than 18 percent last year compared with 2008. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says the 314 reported homicides were the fewest since 1967.

Overall, there was a 10.8 percent drop in violent crimes and an 8 percent dip in property crimes even though the city's economy sagged and unemployment rose.

Rapes were down about 8 percent and auto thefts plunged nearly 20 percent.

The drops are being mirrored elsewhere in the country. New York City finished the year with the fewest killings since comparable record-keeping began in the 1960s.

[pesto]

The murder rate seems to be dropping in most large cities. Theories vary, but It seems that most analysts ascribe it to the success of the anti-drug and anti-gang efforts of the last 20 years (the reality is that aside from killing you spouse, heroin and crack and the money to buy them with are the only things worth killing for).

This combined with major education reform (which is boiling along these days as well) will do more for DT LA than all the highrises, restaurants and transportation improvements combined. Once parents have the power to take control of failing schools and make them better, the biggest obstacle to families living DT will be eliminated.

[ocman]

I have a suspicion traffic congestion has a little to do with it. You can't just rob a bank and drive off any more.

[dragonsky]

AEG's chief is a force in L.A.
Tim Leiweke has driven vast changes in the texture of downtown L.A.'s cityscape.
By Cara Mia DiMassa
The Los Angeles Times
February 7, 2010

With a hard hat perched on his head and an orange safety vest enveloping his burly figure, Tim Leiweke leaned against a window 52 stories up. He peered north, taking in a vista from downtown to the San Gabriel Mountains. "It's amazing, the view, eh?" he asked.

With the ease of an urban planner and the affection of a doting uncle, Leiweke pointed out symbols of downtown's revitalization. There, he gestured enthusiastically: a Ralphs supermarket, the refurbished Eastern Columbia building, and finally, the light-filled and logo-emblazoned L.A. Live district that his company, Anschutz Entertainment Group, has built.

But at ground level, Leiweke, the president and chief executive of AEG, was more reserved. The sleek, glass-encased tower in which he had been standing represents something dramatic for Los Angeles. The tower, which includes 1,001 hotel rooms to serve the nearby Convention Center as well as 224 luxury condos, is downtown's first new skyscraper in 18 years. But it also represents a major gamble.

"It scares the hell out of me," Leiweke said. "It's the hardest thing we've ever done, and we are going right into the eye of the storm."

At a time when City Hall is reeling from financial woes, big public works projects remain stalled and private developments have been canceled, Leiweke as much as any other individual is driving the transformation of a major part of Los Angeles.

Those who praise him see Leiweke as an exemplar of what Los Angeles has long lacked -- a smart, savvy player who can link arms with financial backers, politicians and unionized workers with equal gusto. In an era when the city can do little development on its own, he and AEG have helped fill a major civic void, doing what many would consider city-building on mostly private land.

"No one has built a center like that in the history of this city -- or many other cities for that matter, and he has clearly been the leader," said philanthropist and civic booster Eli Broad. Leiweke "didn't do it himself, but it wouldn't have happened without him." Indeed, other major projects, including the Grand Avenue development that Broad has touted, have stalled in the recession.

To critics, however, Leiweke is a classic example of an influence peddler who curries favor with lawmakers through huge financial donations and gets, in turn, handouts in the form of tax breaks and a rubber stamp on his vision. The company received approximately $246 million in tax breaks on the L.A. Live project alone -- plus a grant of $5 million from redevelopment funds.

"There is a feeling that things are out of balance in the attention the city is paying to that area, to downtown in general and in particular to that area around Staples [Center] and L.A. Live," said Dennis Hathaway, of the Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight, which has tangled repeatedly with AEG. "And there's a perception that AEG has kind of become the tail that is wagging the dog of the city."

Under the radar

For most of the time he has lived in Los Angeles, Leiweke has been an under-the-radar figure, someone who can hang with celebrities, politicians and sports figures but rarely gets noticed, even in his own buildings.

That began to shift last year, after singer Michael Jackson died days before beginning an AEG-backed comeback show in London. The ensuing controversy, largely over the costs of Jackson's memorial service, raised Leiweke's public profile. It will rise further with the inauguration this month of AEG's hotel skyscraper.

In the years since the last skyscraper opened downtown, in 1992, the area has become a residential hub while its fortune as a corporate center has waned.

Buildings that once served as worldwide headquarters now house branch offices. Gone are the business executives who in past generations used wealth and influence behind the scenes to guide the city.

Leiweke, 52, is among a handful of people who have stepped in to fill that void, articulating visions of what the city should look like.

For Leiweke and AEG, that has meant L.A. Live, the sports and entertainment district built around Staples Center. The zone's sea of flashing big-screen TVs and corporate logos might not be for everyone. But with bustling foot traffic, it looks a lot like the vibrant destination critics have long complained downtown lacked.

Still, Leiweke is opening the nearly $1-billion skyscraper, which includes Ritz-Carlton and J.W. Marriott hotels, in the midst of a recession. And he worries that Los Angeles has done little to encourage tourists and conventions to consider the area.

"We are a city that has no plan of attack about how to defend ourselves for the No. 1 generator of our economy, which is tourism," Leiweke said. "We have no plan. We spend no money; we have no infrastructure; we have no focus."

What Tim Leiweke thinks Los Angeles is -- and isn't -- doing for its future holds enormous weight. He maintains personal friendships with a number of politicians, including City Councilwoman Jan Perry, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. They make regular appearances at company events and have benefited from AEG's political machine, which has given more than $1.8 million to political candidates and causes over the last five years.

He and his company are among L.A.'s biggest boosters -- and its biggest beneficiaries.

All of which makes the tower, which Leiweke can see from the window of his office in the heart of L.A. Live, a symbol.

The meaning, however, is open to interpretation.

Arriving in L.A.

Tim Leiweke arrived in Los Angeles in 1996, hired by billionaire Philip Anschutz and real estate magnate Ed Roski Jr. (Though Leiweke is the public face of his company, he still answers to the reclusive Anschutz, who lives in Colorado.) Anschutz and Roski had recently purchased the L.A. Kings, and they wanted Leiweke to turn around the flailing organization and build an arena.

Leiweke, who had been working in professional sports since his early 20s, got on the phone and personally urged season ticket holders to renew subscriptions for the Kings' first year without star Wayne Gretzky. He offered them a full refund if they were dissatisfied. And as Roski and Anschutz narrowed down possible sites for their arena, eventually settling on a downtown parcel that included parking lots as well as the Convention Center North Hall, Leiweke lobbied City Council members, rallied the city's labor unions and pushed for public support.

Complex land deal

The result was one of the most complicated land deals that L.A. had ever seen, which gave the developer $58 million in city bonds and $12 million in redevelopment grants for what became Staples Center.

Rob Light, managing partner and head of music at Creative Artists Agency, met Leiweke when he went to look at architectural models of Staples Center, then in the planning phase. Leiweke, Light said, "struck me as the most confident man I'd ever met. He talked as if he was already putting the first hoe into the ground. It was going to get built. He was a force of nature."

Fernando Guerra, director of the Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said Leiweke and Anschutz carefully targeted their pitch to developers and people in sports and entertainment.

"They were able to capture the different sectors, not because they integrated them, but because they sliced them up," said Guerra, who consulted for the company from 1998 to 2001. "They had different talking points for different sectors. Very few people can do that."

After the center was built, AEG sold land around the arena to hand-picked developers, who began building condo and retail projects. The area, known as South Park, is now one of downtown's most successful neighborhoods.

More than four years ago, when construction crews were about to turn the first shovel for L.A. Live, Leiweke likened his project to New York's Times Square, saying that the award shows, live broadcasts and fan fests planned for the site would help establish Los Angeles as the "event capital of the world."

AEG has managed to bring some high-profile events to the Nokia Theatre, including the Emmys and the "American Idol" finale. And people are going to the zone -- and, by extension, to downtown.

On a weekday afternoon, tourists and Angelenos alike circle the property. Weekend nights bring large crowds, drawn by a confluence of sporting events, musical acts at Nokia Theatre and several clubs on the property.

But the 30,000-square-foot Grammy Museum, an integral part of L.A. Live, has struggled to find an audience. (At a premiere of "Michael Jackson's This Is It," the film of the pop star's last rehearsals, ushers handed out free tickets to the museum.) Some buyers backed out of the tower's condos as the economy foundered, and hotel bookings have lagged behind projections.

That has meant that Leiweke has been rolling up his sleeves to sell the venue, giving tours of the hotel tower to pretty much anyone with an interest and using unusual methods to lure events to L.A. Live.

He enlisted celebrities Steve Carell and Ryan Seacrest to film videos supporting his effort to bring the National Hockey League draft to L.A. It worked.

The showmanship, said Leiweke, is necessary because L.A. is losing conventions and championship games to Las Vegas and other cities that invest civic funds to sell themselves.

"Every other city that we would be in, the city would come to us and say, 'Are you guys OK? Can we help you?' " Leiweke said. "I told the mayor, 'You are damn lucky it is us. Because if it were anyone else, they would be out of business.' "

Dealing with other cities, where a solid base of businesses and families supports philanthropic causes and rallies behind political causes, said Leiweke, makes him realize how much is missing in Los Angeles.

"We are not a community," he said. "We are a series of communities that happen to be in a city. But the reality is that people in Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, think very differently about downtown than people that live in and around downtown. There's a disconnect in L.A."

That's one reason, Leiweke said, his firm has been so politically active and gives money to sometimes unpopular causes, including a 2007 telephone utility tax opposed by many of AEG's partners. "At some point or another, you have to get involved and make it a better system."

Leiweke largely sidestepped questions about whether the company's donations have bought it untoward influence.

"I would think that any logical human being would sit back and say, 'This is a company that doesn't need to make political donations to get influence,' " he said.

"The more relevant question is do we have more of an impact and get more of a reaction from the politicians because of the billion dollars" the company has spent on the hotel tower, he added. "Of course we do. And by the way, I think that's OK, because . . . we are going to employ hundreds and hundreds of people."

But the criticism has not abated. After Jackson's death, Leiweke went on television to announce that his company would host a public memorial service for the pop star -- and was criticized by some of the singer's fans, who asserted that Leiweke and AEG shared culpability in Jackson's death.

Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich demanded that AEG repay the city for costs associated with the memorial, and as the two men publicly quarreled over the amount, Trutanich tried to block AEG's installation of mega-signs at L.A. Live.

Trutanich, in an interview, called Leiweke "a very personable guy. . . . He does a good job for his company, and I likewise want to do a good job for my city."

AEG eventually recouped its investment in the Jackson tour, mostly by selling rights to "This Is It." But the events took an emotional toll. Leiweke said it took weeks to "finally, kind of, get back to functioning properly."

So the glass-and-steel tower soaring over L.A. Live can also be seen as AEG's hope for rehabilitation, if not redemption. That was on view during a well-choreographed series of fundraising efforts in December and January, culminating in a black-tie event benefiting the City of Hope hospital.

Like so many Leiweke-orchestrated events, the benefit had a dual purpose: to raise money for cancer research by honoring AEG's chief executive, and to inaugurate the L.A. Live hotel ballroom.

At a VIP party on the tower's pool deck, Leiweke posed side by side with Villaraigosa and Schwarzenegger, while servers passed trays of Diet Coke -- Leiweke's favorite drink and the product of an AEG partner.

Later, downstairs, he tried to deflect some of the praise the mayor and governor had heaped on him. "I just went out and gave speeches and fought the city attorney," he said.

Then he looked around the ballroom, where guests included five members of the City Council, the mayor and the city controller, and suggested that with so many politicians in attendance, AEG could work out a deal to reimburse the city for costs associated with the Jackson memorial. "We could do a quick session and agree to terms," Leiweke joked.

And he reminded another guest, Magic Johnson, of a pledge the former basketball star had made:

"He's promised me I will be working at a Starbucks if this hotel goes to hell in a handbasket."

[dragonsky]

Architecture review: the tower at L.A Live
The 54-story hotel and condominium tower, the downtown area's first new high-rise since 1992, breaks little new ground in residential design.
By Christopher Hawthorne
Times Architecture Critic
The Los Angeles Times
February 13, 2010

Given the number of proposals for bold, expressive towers in downtown Los Angeles that have been splashed across newspaper and magazine pages in recent years, it's easy to forget that the area has not actually seen any skyscrapers completed since 1992, when the second of Arthur Erickson's California Plaza high-rises opened on Bunker Hill.

That drought ends Tuesday, when a 54-story hotel and condominium tower, wrapped in a geometric pattern of glittering, blue-tinted glass, is formally unveiled at L.A. Live.

The tower, by the large corporate architecture firm Gensler, adds a significant bookend to the southern end of the downtown skyline. It signals that AEG's massive L.A. Live complex, among the biggest private developments in Los Angeles history, is finally finished. And it ranks as the tallest residential high-rise in all of Los Angeles.

As far as architectural ambition goes, though, the building makes a faint, even passive impression, despite the diverting patterns on its facade. It is more focused on operating as a glossy vertical marker for L.A. Live -- and the tower is hard to miss from any of downtown's freeways -- than on exploring a fresh or idiosyncratic path for high-rise design in L.A.

That makes it a rather deflating sign that the innovation and experimentation that have always animated residential architecture in Los Angeles -- beginning with the modest bungalow and the courtyard apartment, and extending through the Case Study houses and the tough, disjointed masterpieces of the L.A. School -- may have trouble making the leap to the high-rise, even as more condos and apartments are built in the air.

Admittedly, AEG's failure to produce a truly innovative -- or even genuinely curious -- piece of architecture comes as little surprise. It has never claimed to be the sort of client for which adventurous design is a priority.

Yet the essential conservatism of the tower, which holds a JW Marriott on its lower floors with a Ritz-Carlton hotel and Ritz-branded condos above, is no minor issue for Los Angeles. It goes to the heart of the city's cultural identity. Inventive, forward-looking residential design has always been the foundation of L.A.'s reputation as a center for cutting-edge architecture -- and, arguably, of its broader history as a place that embraces creative personalities and artistic movements of all kinds.

But so far, as the city has moved haltingly away from the stand-alone house and garden and toward new kinds of multifamily living, that spirit of design innovation has not kept pace. We're still waiting for the piece of residential architecture that produces the old sense of risk-taking while nodding toward the city's denser, apartment-heavy future.

Apartment buildings and condo towers, of course, are far more complex , as real-estate and planning ventures, than single-family houses, which continue to serve as a crucible for architectural invention not just in this country but around the world. Risk-taking clients for private houses still outnumber those for residential towers by a substantial margin, and that is unlikely to change any time soon.

Still, it's dispiriting that the boom years of the last decade wound up producing just one major addition to the downtown skyline -- and a less than thrilling one at that. It is surely significant, along these lines, that one of the most architecturally promising condo towers now under construction in an American city, a project called HL23, is designed by a talented L.A. architect, Neil Denari -- but is being built in Manhattan, on a site overlooking the High Line elevated park.

If an architect like Denari is finding New York City a more hospitable place to build such a tower than Los Angeles, then maybe Los Angeles needs to rethink its planning priorities -- and to push developers like AEG, which at L.A. Live has received a series of concessions and sweeteners from city agencies, to pursue more meaningful architecture.

To be sure, the Gensler tower meets the ground more successfully than the California Plaza buildings. On its lower 24 floors, the tower is shaped like a book propped open, with wings pointing to the south and east. Those wings shelter a sizable open plaza leading on one side to the Marriott's eye-catching three-level lobby and then to Olympic Boulevard, and on the other to the larger L.A. Live square, which opened in 2008. The new ground-level space, enlivened by landscape design by Rios Clementi Hale Studios, and for the most part free of car traffic, is significantly more open and public-minded than the existing plaza, which faces Staples Center and is ringed by a series of video screens.

The Gensler architects also deserve credit for overcoming the building's single biggest design challenge: how to squeeze two different hotels, plus 224 condominiums on two dozen floors, into the tower without sacrificing its identity as a single piece of architecture. This challenge was sharpened by the fact that each of the different components -- Marriott hotel rooms, Ritz hotel rooms, condos and penthouse units -- requires a different layout, with the condos, for example, needing a wider floor plate than the hotel rooms below.

The architects finessed that issue by wrapping the entire volume in a contiguous skin that bulges near the top, a bit like a Q-tip, to accommodate the wider condo floors. They then devised a glazing strategy that allows a range of window sizes -- single panes in the Marriott rooms, double ones in the Ritz and floor-to-ceiling glass in the condos -- without compromising the unity of the exterior design. . The building's stepped design makes it look from certain angles like a high-backed chair, an impression that's particularly strong when you look at the tower from the east.

From the start, AEG's main objective at L.A. Live has been to create a sleekly homogenous, even hermetic ensemble where architecture operates primarily as a backdrop to billboards, video screens and other signage and branding. It seems clear -- now that the complex is complete -- that it has managed to meet that goal nearly perfectly.

[edluva]

i've always said la's best architecture exists in other cities. it seems all our home grown talent get their best commissions elsewhere. how disappointing.

i never really cared for la live's tower other than for its height. it's "nice" but underwhelming. it's not bad, and not good. wholeheartedly agree with hawthorne. it's pretty conservative. says more about la's lack of institutional wealth that we can't build innovative big projects. in that respect la is, to use a cliche, a giant suburb. a giant collective of small town aspirations.

[dragonsky]

CRA Gives Final Approval to Civic Park
Los Angeles Downtown News
Published: Friday, May 21, 2010 5:56 PM PDT

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - A 16-acre park in the heart of Downtown came one step closer to reality last week.

On Thursday, May 20, the Community Redevelopment Agency board of commissioners approved the final construction documents for the park that is part of developer Related Cos.’ Grand Avenue plan. Although the mammoth housing and retail components of that project, formally titled The Grand, are on hold due to financing issues, groundbreaking for the park is expected by July. The $56 million amenity, completely paid for by Related, will stretch from the Music Center four blocks down to City Hall. It includes elements such as sun and shade gardens, and will upgrade the historic Arthur J. Will Fountain outside the County Hall of Administration. A rendering depicts a large “event lawn” outside City Hall. County officials are expected to vote on the final construction documents on June 1.

http://www.ladowntownnews.com/articl...d296097061.txt

[dragonsky]

Civic pride shaping Civic Park
Downtown's $56-million project, which has its official groundbreaking Thursday, audaciously aims to be many things to many people — and that leaves some devilish details to sort out.
By Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic
The Los Angeles Times
July 14, 2010

Downtown's $56-million Civic Park is finally showing signs of life — and not just because construction crews have begun working this week on the sloping site between the Music Center and City Hall, with an official groundbreaking ceremony scheduled for Thursday morning.

Over the last several months, a late-in-the-game effort by the park's designers, Rios Clementi Hale Studios, to give it a crisper look and strengthen its overall conceptual framework has paid real dividends. The design still shows the strain of trying to answer to dozens of interested public officials and constituent groups and their differing visions of what the park might be. Yet it has also begun to assert, for the first time, a coherent aesthetic identity.

There is another reason for growing — if still measured — optimism about the park's future: The president of the Music Center, Stephen Rountree, confirmed Tuesday that the Music Center has been in preliminary talks with officials from Los Angeles County, which owns the 12-acre park site, to take over management of the park and its programming.

Under the Music Center's control, the park could become an extended front yard for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, Center Theatre Group and other organizations. In the most optimistic scenario, the Music Center's involvement could help spur fundraising for more sophisticated performance facilities than the ones now in the works. Imagine a new band shell in the center of the park, designed by a leading contemporary architect, as a spot for Gustavo Dudamel to lead the L.A. Phil in more intimate outdoor concerts than are possible at the Hollywood Bowl.

That ambitious marriage of architecture and programming remains a long way off. For now, the main challenge at the park, which was funded by a $50-million payment from developer Related Companies as part of its now-stalled Grand Avenue mixed-use project, remains the same: how to squeeze an effective design into a tricky, sloping site pockmarked with underground garages and concrete ramps. In that sense the park is a symbol of the hurdles Los Angeles as a whole faces in trying to retrofit its civic spaces for a future in which cars no longer play such a dominant role in urban planning or daily life.

In the design's most meaningful change, Rios and his colleagues have added a series of curving north-south pathways, some as narrow as 18 inches and others as wide as 6 feet, to an existing backbone of straight east-west corridors. The design of the new paths is loosely based on a so-called Goode projection, a kind of mapping best known for providing a way to display the Earth's surface on a two-dimensional surface.

As Rios explains them, the paths, whose curving lines recall those of a Goode map of the globe, emerged from an effort to think broadly about the remarkably diverse population the park is meant to serve. (As he likes to point out, an astonishing 92 languages are spoken by students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.) As a design gesture, the new paths turn those ideas about Los Angeles and its role as a global city into an organizing principle, at least abstractly, for the park and how visitors will move through it. Rios and other designers in the firm also studied maps and diagrams showing plane trips across the globe as well as various car and sea routes.

That concept is matched by the selection of plants, which rejects a doctrinaire or limiting insistence on natives in favor of a wide (but drought-tolerant) range of trees and flowers that aims to match the cosmopolitanism of the city as a whole. A preliminary plan to bring a collection of food trucks to a paved section near Spring Street could broaden the park's food offerings in much the same way

Along with slipping in a small dog run at the northeast corner, in the shadow of the Criminal Courts building, Rios Clementi Hale has also designed a pair of new support buildings at each end of the site — the park's first pieces of architecture. These are basic, attractive modern buildings beneath oversized sloping roofs. The one at the western side, near Grand Avenue, will hold a Starbucks; the other, on the edge of a large event lawn at the foot of City Hall, will serve as an ancillary building during concerts and also will be available for rental for birthday parties and other celebrations.

The firm has also designed a series of chairs, tables and other street furniture. Executed in a curving, streamlined style and colored a bright magenta, the furniture adds precisely the jolt of contemporary style that park has been missing.

And in a significant victory for good design, the firm convinced county officials to allow it to keep many of the chairs unattached — rather than bolted down for security reasons — so that visitors can move them around from the sun to the shade, or vice versa, and in the process begin to feel that the park is in some sense theirs to shape.

Significant questions still hover over the park and its future. One is whether an additional $27 million in state funds — already approved but caught up in Sacramento's budget crisis — will ever come through.

Another is whether Eli Broad, in negotiating the right to build a museum for his own collection on a city-owned piece of land at Grand Avenue and 2nd Street, will offer to lend sculpture or other outdoor-ready artwork from that collection to the park — or if he will underwrite an effort, perhaps in conjunction with the Museum of Contemporary Art, to curate a series of rotating outdoor exhibitions.

Broad said a few weeks ago that he was looking into such a program. But he's been publicly silent on the topic since then.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,5715540.story

[dragonsky]

Park of the Future Begins
The $56 Million Public Space Is Set to Open in 2012
by Jon Regardie, Executive Editor
Los Angeles Downtown News
Published: Friday, July 16, 2010 4:05 PM PDT

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - At 9:41 a.m. on Thursday, July 15, the water stopped running at the historic Arthur J. Will fountain behind the County Hall of Administration. As it did, work on a $56 million park that will stretch from the Music Center to City Hall officially began.

The fountain shut-off was the culmination of a ceremony that attracted hundreds of civic and business leaders. They came to celebrate the beginning of construction on a 12-acre space that is set to open in the summer of 2012.

The park is the public component of the Grand Avenue plan, a $3 billion project by developer Related Cos. that is currently stalled due to the recession. However, as part of the deal negotiated by a city-county team when the development rights were awarded, Related paid $50 million up front.

“Related, thank you for supporting the effort, and thank you for your money,” joked Councilwoman Jan Perry to the crowd.

Perry, along with County Super­visor Gloria Molina, were credited with spearheading the creation of the park.

Eli Broad, a former chair of the Grand Avenue Committee, noted that the idea for the Grand Avenue plan was first broached a decade ago, during the construction of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, when officials decided to explore whether adjacent city- and county-owned land could be developed. That ultimately led to an application process which resulted in the selection of Related’s Frank Gehry-designed project.

“The civic park was a critical element in developing the Grand Avenue project,” said Broad, whose proposal for a $100 million art museum, also on Grand Avenue, was approved by the Community Redevelopment Agency last week.

The park, designed by Rios Clementi Hale Studios, will start on Grand Avenue and culminate at Spring Street. Although a park exists there now, it can be difficult to access, as users must navigate past two circular parking ramp barriers at the Grand Avenue entrance, or snake up L-shaped staircases from Broadway.

The new design will make entry points easier on both the eastern and western sides. When finished, it will feature pathways of varying widths, a new “event lawn,” trees, seating areas and terraced green space. There will also be a small dog run. The fountain will not be changed, though the surrounding area will be extended with a pool shallow enough for people to walk through.

Bill Witte, the West Coast president of Related Cos., said that progress on the park will help spur the overall Grand Avenue plan forward.

“When you add Eli’s museum to that, this becomes a hugely exciting place,” he said, “and this will actually make selling this to lenders and investors much easier, because one of the challenges on Bunker Hill has been that there is no there there. Yes there is Disney Hall and the Music Center, but they were kind of islands. Now the dots are beginning to connect, and that’s huge.”

Nelson Rising, president and CEO of Maguire Properties and the chair of the Grand Avenue Committee, predicted that progress on the park and Broad’s museum would spark improvement throughout Downtown.

“It attracts residents, which we need to have a 24-hour community and to have retail,” he said. “And obviously whatever is good for the Downtown core is helpful to the office building developers because it makes a more attractive place to work. So I think this is a very important step in the evolution of Downtown.”

http://www.ladowntownnews.com/articl...9004285629.txt

[dragonsky]

Park 101 Costs and Next Steps Outlined by Study
By Eric Richardson
blogdowntown.com
Published: Thursday, July 01, 2010, at 11:45AM

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The five phases of the project to cap the 101 freeway through Downtown with park space would cost $387 million, but would generate $408 million in private investment. Those numbers, part of an economic feasibility study by AECOM Design + Planning, were presented to the community on Tuesday evening along with updated conceptual plans for phasing and renderings of how the results might look.

Stretching from the L.A. River past Grand Avenue, the completed project would reconnect the Civic Center with Union Station and Chinatown, spurring economic growth in an area that doesn't have any today.

Planners have divided the scope into five phases. The first, presented to the community back in May, would be a $2.5-million effort to rework the entrance to Union Station and create a more fluid pedestrian path into El Pueblo.

Next would come a $34-million phase that would cap the block between Main and Los Angeles, creating a pedestrian path from El Pueblo to the Civic Center. The third phase would cap three blocks of freeway and redevelop the parking lots west of El Pueblo into housing and office space. Fourth would come improvements east of Los Angeles, while the final phase would add a freeway cap west to Grand.

Next steps identified for the project included finding political champions, working with the High Speed Rail project on how it interfaces with the Union Station area, starting work on the small first phase and beginning the environmental project for the complete project.

http://blogdowntown.com/2010/07/5469...ps-outlined-by

[dragonsky]

RFK is LAUSD's most costly campus – and it needs more cash
By Connie Llanos, Staff Writer
Daily News Los Angeles
Posted: 07/09/2010 09:32:39 PM PDT
Updated: 07/10/2010 01:32:19 PM PDT

A view of the high school entrance at the new Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools location Friday, July 9, 2010, in Los Angeles, CA. The school, which cost an estimated $580 million to build, has different entrances for high school, middle school and elementary school. (Andy Holzman/Daily News Staff Photographer)

Already ballooning to $572 million, Los Angeles Unified's most expensive school – and possibly the nation's – looks like it will need a final $6 million infusion before fully opening this fall.

The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, a K-12 complex on the former site of the Ambassador Hotel where Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, needs the money to satisfy environmental regulations.

School board members are scheduled Tuesday to vote on the additional funding request.

The school will consist of six different learning centers and enroll 4,260 students, making the cost per seat about $135,000 – nearly 40 percent higher than the average school built in the central Los Angeles area over the past two years.

It even exceeds the per-seat cost of the pricey High School for the Visual and Performing Arts, whose $132,000 per-seat price tag – along with its bold, roller-coaster inspired architecture – raised plenty of eyebrows when it opened in September 2009.

District officials say the cost of the Robert F. Kennedy complex is more than justified if you consider its urban location, historical significance and expected community role.

"It has all the modern amenities, like an underground garage, a pool, a state-of-the-art auditorium...," said James Sohn, LAUSD's chief facilities executive. "In that context, cost of the schools is appropriate."

The 23-acre Wilshire Boulevard lot will bring the park-starved neighborhood much-needed green space, including soccer fields and a state-of-the-art swimming pool. It also includes public art pieces and a marble mural memorial to Kennedy, who was running for president when he was gunned down in the hotel's kitchen.

Still, some of the items purchased for the school have caught the attention of top district officials, such as talking benches designed by artists to commemorate the historic significance of the Ambassador Hotel and its famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub.

"If you're asking me if I can justify a talking bench... when I look at the science labs and libraries of our older schools ... I cannot," LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines said.

Cortines questioned the need for such items to be paid for out of taxpayer funds, when they could have been funded through private donations.

But the schools chief said small extravagances shouldn't detract from seeing the school as a centerpiece for the community and the city.

From its inception, the Ambassador schools were intended to be one of the most elaborate campuses, funded through the district's $20 billion voter-approved construction bond program.

The project was bid in two separate phases, for an initial total cost of $400 million, district officials said. Rising construction costs, for the most part, caused the district to add $170 million to the total price tag in 2008, although most media reported the original $400 million price tag as recently as January, when it was officially named after Kennedy.

The RFK complex of schools is now the most expensive campus ever built by LAUSD, surpassing even the $377 million spent to renovate and decontaminate the troubled Belmont Learning Complex, which had been built on toxic land.

Of the $170 million in additional cost, some $21 million was from change orders requested by the contractor. Most of those changes were to meet stringent state requirements and historical preservation requirements, district officials said.

The move to build a school on the Ambassador Hotel site began in the 1980s.

When the district began its battle to acquire the site, it was busing 3,800 students in the adjacent community to schools across the city - and as far as the west San Fernando Valley.

Still, the district had to spar for a decade with business mogul Donald Trump, who wanted to build the world's tallest skyscraper on the land.

Later district officials also fought historic preservationists who wanted to stop the school's construction.

After heated negotiations, preservationists abandoned the effort, but only after officials agreed to some concessions. That included re-creating key elements of the Ambassador site, including the historic Cocoanut Grove nightclub where singers like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. once performed for Hollywood celebrities.

"I am very excited that after many years of struggle and many years of community action, we can finally open the door on the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools project ...," said LAUSD board President Monica Garcia. "This is going to be an amazing facility for some 4,000 K-12 students."

Garcia acknowledged the cost, but noted that a lot of money has gone to a number of lawsuits and agreements to preserve the site.

"I am glad we invested when we did and this school continues to be part of the struggle to get to 100 percent graduation in this district."

Neil Gamble, LAUSD's deputy chief of facilities, said the new construction phase of the district's massive construction program is coming to an end, with only a couple of schools left to bid.

"We do not have another school of this magnitude either under construction or planned," Gamble said.

School board member Steve Zimmer said he will look closely at the change orders that have been requested for the project. But he added that "if the true cost were $250,000 a seat, it would be worth every penny."

Charter school officials, however, said LAUSD's construction costs were exorbitant.

"If you look at that cost per seat, that is three or four times what many charter schools are delivering in the Los Angeles area," said Jed Wallace, president of the California Charter School Association.

"I think things could have been done far more efficiently than this project suggests is happening ...," Wallace said. "In this era of great financial pressure I believe we need to use our resources as wisely and efficiently as possible."


Big ticket productions

$578M — Expected construction cost for Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools on former Ambassador Hotel site.

$135K — Construction cost per student seat

Here are some other big L.A. facilities built in recent years for hundred-million-plus price tags:

Hollywood & Highland complex: $625 million, 2001

Americana at Brand: $400 million, 2008

Staples Center: $375 million, 1999

Walt Disney Concert Hall: $274 million, 2003

Universal Studios backlot: $200 million, 2010

Downtown cathedral: $190 million, 2002

Home Depot center: $150 million, 2003

Read More: http://www.dailynews.com/ci_15481816

[dragonsky]

Holy Tokyo, Downtown! Wilshire Grand Hotel Project Could Go Electric
Thursday, August 5, 2010, by Dakota

In a move that would dramatically change the downtown skyline, the developers of the proposed AC Martin-designed Wilshire Grand project are asking for the creation of a new sign district in the Financial District, one that would ultimately allow them to swath large parts of their two towers in LA Live-like electronic advertising. Think: Scrolling, blinking and animated images emitting off a 65-story tower and a 45-story tower. Not only would this style of digital advertising on two tall towers be unprecedented in LA, but it would also essentially extend the path of LA Live, bringing the buzz-y style that defines that district towards the Financial District. So what to think? On the one hand, it's a scenario of oooh, Tokyo-style animated fun, electronic art lighting up the sky. On the other hand, it's a scenario of giant digital Charmin ads blinking down at drivers stuck in traffic on the 101 Freeway.

Read More & Photos: http://la.curbed.com/archives/2010/0..._sign_ante.php

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by LA Downtown News

The $200 Million Trojan Home
University Gateway Offers Housing for 1,600 Students
by Richard Guzmán
LA Downtown News
Published: Friday, August 20, 2010 4:30 PM PDT

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES - When Chicago native Alex Sheft was ready to move out of his dorm, he looked at several apartments near USC.

Able to pay about $1,000 in rent, and willing to share a room, Sheft had several options. But not many would come with an Internet-ready laundry room, roof decks, a gym, study rooms and a 24-hour concierge, along with furniture and a flat screen TV.

Those amenities were what brought Sheft to University Gateway, a $200 million student housing project by Downtown based developer Urban Partners. He is one of about 1,250 students who have already moved in to the complex, where he shares a suite with three roommates.

Located at 3335 S. Figueroa St., on the southeast corner of Jefferson Boulevard, the long-delayed and longer-awaited development was designed and built by Clark Construction. It includes 421 apartments for approximately 1,600 students. It also features 81,500 square feet of ground-floor retail space, half of which is being taken up by USC for office space. Within 45 days, all of the retail space should be filled, with restaurants, a bank and a CVS pharmacy, said John Hrovat, a principal at Urban Partners and a USC alumnus.

Rents range from $899 for a single bed in a two-bedroom apartment that houses four people, to about $3,000 for a sole occupancy one bedroom.

“It’s expensive,” Sheft admits. “But that’s living in L.A., and with all the furniture, with the TV already included, it costs about the same as it would have cost me to rent furniture for another place, so you get what you pay for.”

Easy Living

The eight-story structure blends in with the USC aesthetic, utilizing the Italian Romanesque architectural style seen throughout the campus. Inside, however, it’s a modern, high-tech mix of contemporary style and computer-assisted living.

University Gateway began leasing in September 2009, and students have been moving in since late June. A mass moving day was held on Saturday, Aug. 14, when more than 300 students lugged their clothes, computers and stereos into the project.

Hrovat notes that the occupants don’t need much more than their personal items.

“The day you move into your unit the electricity is on, there’s a phone on, the Internet is on, the cable TV is on, there’s a high definition flat screen in your living room. It’s fully furnished,” Hrovat said. “Everything is on, you just bring your bedding and your groceries and your bookbag and laptop.

“The whole point of that is focus on school, we’ll focus on your housing needs.”

Three security guards work 24 hours a day and greet students in the lobby. Once inside, the first thing people see is a massive video wall comprised of 25 32-inch flat screen televisions. So far they’ve broadcast ESPN, but soon they will display a video art installation.

Past that room is an information kiosk where two TVs are mounted on a wall above a couch. They display information about events going on at the campus. Recently the TVs highlighted a pie-eating contest in the building’s courtyard.

There is a concierge desk — “It’s staffed 24 hours a day and you ask for anything you would ask for at a hotel,” says Hrovat — and a lounge with couches, chairs and more large televisions. Beneath the TVs are connections where students can plug in everything from iPods to laptops to X Boxes.

“Whatever you can throw on it we can display on the TVs,” Hrovat said. “But the idea is not just to be fun, but functional. If students need to come here and practice a Power Point presentation they can plug their computer in here.”

There are 27 study rooms spread throughout the building; one includes computers, while most are just tables and tackboards. There is also a gym and a kitchen facility.

The laundry facilities, meanwhile, have online connections, allowing students to know which machines are available and when their laundry is done.

The building also has roof decks and courtyards with brightly colored outdoor furniture, tables, planters and hanging lights. Utilities are included in the rent.

Filling a Need

Getting to opening day has not been easy.

Early in the planning process, Urban Partners ran into trouble from Conquest Student Housing, a company that at the time had about 20 area housing projects. Although USC and officials including Eighth District City Councilman Bernard Parks strongly endorsed the project, Conquest vigorously opposed the development, and sought to generate more opposition from some in the community.

In September 2007, USC and Urban Partners sued Conquest, accusing the company of resorting to abusive litigation, extortion and othewr illegal measures to halt University Gateway. They also charged that Conquest was stymieing other projects from Urban Partners, a firm whose developments include the Caltrans headquarters and the California Endowment campus in Downtown.

The suit was settled in February 2008, and the project broke ground that July. However, it was two years behind schedule.

While difficult, the trouble may now be worth it for USC officials, who have previously stated that University Gateway will help fill the school’s student housing shortfall of about 7,000 beds. USC guarantees housing to freshmen and sophomores, but the institution has also set a goal in its campus master plan to guarantee four years of student housing for undergraduates and one year for graduate students by 2011.

While people are moving in, for some students, the cost is too high.

“I can’t pay nearly $1,000 in rent,” said Jason Delaney, a junior who shares a two-bedroom apartment in Hollywood with two other roommates. “This is something that I think is out of reach to a lot of students.”

Indeed, a recent search on Craigslist showed that a two-bedroom apartment near USC could be had for as little as $1,150 a month, making prices considerably lower than those at the new project.

But for every student like Delaney, there is someone for whom University Gateway is a fit. Urban Partners hopes to be 100% occupied this semester, and Hrovat said some of the more expensive units near the rooftop deck were amongst the first to be rented.

Gerald Fisher, a freshman from Northern California who recently toured the building with his mother Carol, was impressed, despite the price.

“It’s steep, but it’s a great building, everything is brand new,” he said.

More important was the seal of approval from mom.

“It couldn’t be closer to the university and I think the facilities look wonderful,” said Carol. “Time will tell, but it looks like a great deal for a student.”

Read More: http://www.ladowntownnews.com/articl...e673958795.txt

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by The Los Angeles Times

The Ambassador Hotel

Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools

Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools

Read More: http://framework.latimes.com/2010/09...hotel-site/#/0

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

Big dreams from downtown Los Angeles' big developers
-- Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times
October 12, 2010 | 6:31 pm

An exhibit hall that could be transformed into a football stadium and an electric street car that could whisk people up Broadway were some of the big ideas tossed around Tuesday by some of downtown Los Angeles’ most influential developers.

Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and developers Jim Thomas, Tim Leiweke, Nelson Rising and Tom Gilmore shared their visions of for the next 10 years at a panel at the downtown Marriott, hosted by the Central City Assn.

They admitted that the recession -- which has already stalled some planned projects and left a lot of loft and office space empty -- might slow things down a bit. But they vowed to persevere.

Broad said he would open his new $300-million downtown art museum by December 2012 . Thomas, of Thomas Properties Group, promised to build a 60-story office building by 2015. And Leiweke, president of AEG, shared the details of his company's proposal to redevelop one of the halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center into an exhibition space that could double as an NFL stadium.

Leiweke said he and City Councilwoman Jan Perry have discussed a plan in which his firm would pay for part of the hall's construction in exchange for the management contract for the complex. A different NFL stadium complex has been proposed for the City of Industry.

Leiweke, who helped bring Staples Center and L.A. Live to the Figueroa Street corridor, said other events such as the World Cup and NCAA Final Four games could take place in the downtown stadium. He said it would help the entire downtown economy.

“Game, set, match," Leiweke said. "Everything else will come. Retail will come, transportation will come and people will move back down here.”

The Central City Assn. is planning a legislative agenda to help push things forward downtown, said executive director Carol Schatz. The committee may petition the city to make it easier for restaurants to get permits to serve food outside and may advocate for a better transit system to help circulate pedestrians to neighborhoods within the area, she said.

Schatz said other things -- like lane changes on the 110 and 10 Freeways and the proposed "Subway to the Sea" -- might get the association's support because they would make it easier for people to get downtown.

Broad said increasing the number of cultural institutions also will be important. To that end, he said, next month will mark the groundbreaking of the first phase of the contemporary art museum that will house his personal collection. Broad said he knows his timeline for completing the Grand Avenue museum is ambitious.

“The architects think I’m crazy,” he said to laughter.

Broad and the others acknowledged that the future of downtown hinges on the nation’s overall economic climate.

The Grand Avenue Project's plans for a $3-billion, Frank Gehry-designed hotel, condo and shopping complex have been delayed indefinitely because developers have been unable to secure financing. Rising, chairman of Grand Avenue Committee Inc., said he believes the situation will improve with time.

“It’s not going to be heaven in 2011,” he said. “But I think it’ll be keen in 2013.”

-- Kate Linthicum

Read More: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...-angeles-.html

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Los Angeles Times

USC to break ground on all-sports building in January
The $70-million facility is projected to be three stories and 110,000 square feet and will be located directly west of Heritage Hall. The official announcement will be made Saturday.
By Bill Dwyre, Los Angeles Times
7:00 PM PDT, October 29, 2010

USC will break ground in January on a $70-million all-sports building to be located directly west of Heritage Hall.

The official announcement will be made Saturday. The projected three-story, 110,000-square-foot building has not been named but is expected to be by the ground-breaking, which will honor the donors. The facility is scheduled to be finished in 18 months.

Athletic Director Pat Haden, confirming the project, said the building is needed for both practical and intangible reasons.

The practical reason is the need for additional space, which will allow the football team to move its operations from Heritage Hall into the new building. The new building also will house academic services and workout and rehabilitation facilities for all 21 USC sports. Haden said it is truly meant to be an all-sports facility. Football offices will be on the top floor.

The intangible reason is a morale boost.

"We need this," Haden said. "It has been tough here. We've been slapped around, and there is the cloud of NCAA sanctions. This is both a new building and an uplifting moment."

Haden's office and those of other sports administrative personnel will remain in Heritage Hall, which will become one of three athletic centers at USC, the third being the Galen Center.

Heritage Hall will be 40 years old next year and, as Haden joked, occasionally shows it age.

"I was in the basement the other day," he said, "and I ran across a cockroach the size of a Buick."

Haden said the new building will supplant a soccer field, but that field will be relocated nearby.

Read More: http://www.latimes.com/sports/colleg...,1526821.story

[dragonsky]

Originally Posted by Neon Tommy is the online publication of the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism

L.A. Sports Arena Releases Draft Environmental Impact Report
Paresh Dave | November 19, 2010
Executive Producer
Neon Tommy

The Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena could be demolished, yielding to either an amphitheater or a soccer stadium under draft plans released earlier this week to reinvigorate the publicly managed, cash-strapped and deteriorating entertainment venue that has been short on programming.

In an under-the-radar fashion recently typical of the the body that oversees the 15-acre Sports Arena campus near Exposition Park, the L.A. Memorial Coliseum Commission released a 347-page draft environmental impact report for the dueling project options on Monday. It's unclear how the demolition and redevelopment would be funded.

The soccer stadium option is the third vision for a new sports facility in Los Angeles County, following Ed Roski's plan for an NFL stadium in the City of Industry and an AEG proposal also released this week for a $725 million stadium that would be designed to house an NFL team and the World Cup.

The Sports Arena has come under scrutiny during recent weeks because its financial woes may have forced the Coliseum Commission to suprisingly rescind a ban on electronic music festivals, more commonly known as raves, at the facility. The festivals have been one of the few steady streams of revenue for the aging facility, likely bringing in a few hundred thousand dollars annually. The release of the draft environmental impact report officially brings the commission to a crossroads.

As early as January, the nine people who sit on the panel will have to decide to do one of three things: go forward with the soccer stadium idea and mount a challenge to proposals of Roski and AEG; construct an amphitheater and hope people make good use of it; or launch a smaller renovation of the existing facility while watching it sink into a deeper operating deficit.

The amphitheater option would feature an 800-square-foot stage backed by an open half-dome shell and a large grass field flanked by flag poles. Not included in the plans are any fixed seats, video boards or fencing. Concession stands and restrooms "may be provided," the report says. Events that could be held here include Farmer's Markets, rallies, festivals, exercise groups, concerts, neighborhood carnivals and special ceremonies.

A very preliminary concept drawing of what the soccer stadium may look like.The other option envisions a 22,000-seat Major League Soccer stadium, offering some competition to the Home Depot Center in Carson. The stadium plan calls for MLS games, exhibition games and USC soccer games to be played there. At the varsity level, USC only has a women's team. Local teams would be allowed to practice there as well.

The plan mentions no outisde retail or dining components--items that may ultimately be needed for financial viability.

The stadium, which would be oriented the same way as the arena is right now, would also hold concerts and rallies. If USC's team moves into this new stadium, it's current field near Hoover Street and 30th Street would likely become available for USC to develop on.

The seven-story Sports Arena opened 51 years ago amid a nationwide boom in arena construction, providing the region its first new sports venue in about 25 years.

Most of the arena's highlights came in its first few years of existence, hosting boxing, basketball, hockey, the 1960 Democratic National Convention and the 1961 Freedom Rally at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke.

But professional sports franchises such as the Lakers and Kings quickly moved to other location such as The Forum and Pauley Pavilion. Only the Clippers would come play at the arena from 1984 to 1999.

During the past five years, an event has been held there, on average, only once every six days. Nearly all of the events attracted less than 10,000 people. In comparison, the Staples Center held about four times as many events, according to the website of its owner, AEG.

Most of the environmental impacts mentioned in the report are routine ones that one would expect from a major construction project. Lighting and noise may anger residents living along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. But because the Sports Arena is built in a big ditch, the stadium and amphitheater would also maintain low profiles.

The parking and traffic situation would also change very little because even if the Coliseum and Sports Arena held concurrent events, overall capacity would be limited to about the same level as right now. About 20,000 parking spaces exist throughout Exposition Park and USC, and no additional ones would have to be added.

The report states the Sports Arena needs $8.2 million in upgrades--from new seats to new plumbing and heating systems--within the next five years to keep operating. Each of the past five fiscal years, however, has brought operating losses totaling nearly $4 million. Because the commission doesn't receive any taxpayer subsidies, it doesn't have the cash to pay for those fixes. The document notes that even if improvements were made, the Sports Arena would not be any more competitive with venues such as the 19,000-seat Staples Center.

The arena's present configuration allows it hold about 15,000 people for hockey, boxing and basketball events.

L.A. Coliseum Commission general manager Pat Lynch has not responded to several voicemails left by Neon Tommy during the past two weeks. Members of the Coliseum Commission, including L.A. County supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Zev Yaroslavsky, L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks and real estate developer Rick Caruso, could not be reached for comment.

The 45-day public comment period on the draft report runs until Dec. 30. It seems wise for public agencies, including the L.A. City Council and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, to ask for an extension of that comment period since it runs right through two major holiday periods.

Either way, comments should be directed to Coliseum general manager Pat Lynch at 3939 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90037. The report is available online, at the previous address and at the Exposition Park Library. The online PDF is also "secured," so text from the document can't be copied and pasted.

Under a joint agreement between the state, city and county, the Coliseum Commission maintains and operates the Coliseum and Sports Arena. That agreement runs through 2054.

Los Angeles voters thrice rejected measures to publicly finance the construction of a Downtown sports arena. Urged on by County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, the state Legislature eventually jumped in, authorizing in 1958 the sale of $7 million in bonds to build the present arena. Before the Exposition Park project was settled on, there were three competing visions of "world-class" arenas across Los Angeles.

The Coliseum has stood since 1923. The commission has existed since 1945.

Read More: http://www.neontommy.com/news/2010/1...opment-project


soccer stadium

amphitheater

[SD_Phil]

^Touch call here. That area could use some redevelopment but I'm not sure either plan is right. Also not a good sign how much trouble the Commission seems to be in financially.