LOS ANGELES | Downtown Project Rundown 6.0

[SoCalKid]

I was actually just coming on here to ask if anyone knew the timeline of this project. It's unclear from this picture if this is just the LA Live portion or the whole street though. It is a little strange that this got started right when the Lakers, Kings, and Clippers are in the playoffs though...

[citywatch]

^ It's apparently ongoing phases of the proj announced a yr ago. The pandemic slowed things down & redoing the plaza was probably penciled in by contractors way before the owners knew what events might happen....around 2:28 the merging of the area between the arena & LA live is mentioned.


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[citywatch]

Swig Co

A high-profile office building in downtown Los Angeles has landed a new buyer as part of a redevelopment deal that came with a steep discount. The Swig Co., a San Francisco-based real estate firm, sold the former Union Oil headquarters building at 617 W. 7th St. for $20.5 million to the Shomof Group, a local firm with a track record for historic conversions and extensive redevelopment projects. The deal, confirmed by local property records, works out to about $94 a square foot. That's about half the nearly $39 million — or $180 per square foot — Swig paid for the downtown building in 2011.

The roughly 215,000-square-foot property hit the market this year as a potential residential conversion opportunity while the amount of available office space in the city, like some other areas across the country, outpaces demand.

Built in the early 1920s, the building at the corner of Seventh and Hope streets was developed to house the headquarters for Union Oil, one of the world's major petroleum exporters after its founding in the late 19th century. The Beaux Arts property established the company's corporate hub in Los Angeles and is now about 40% leased to a mix of professional, legal and financial services firms, according to CoStar data.

booking.com

Add Kodō Hotel to the list of the best and most unique places to stay in Los Angeles. Modern, minimalist and boasting just nine rooms, the boutique hotel opened earlier this year in downtown L.A.’s Arts District along South Santa Fe Avenue just below 7th Street. Directly across the street from Warner Music Group’s L.A. offices, Kodō Hotel is tucked away on the second floor of a former Beaux Arts-style fire station that dates back to 1927.

Travel aficionados may recall that this spot had a brief life as another boutique hotel, the aptly named Firehouse Hotel, which enjoyed a brief run after opening in 2019, not far from such hotspot restaurants as Bestia and Bavel. Now the nearly 100-year-old Engine Co. No. 17 building has been renovated and reborn with a completely different vibe, trading in boho cool for a Japanese-ryokan-inspired aesthetic.


booking.com

Guests should be aware that the hotel does not have an elevator and the hotel rooms are reached only via a tall staircase. Rooms, starting at $218 a night, are available at kodohotel.com and booking.com. The property’s ground-floor Kodō restaurant serves everything from sushi rolls and omakase platters to salads and main dishes like Uni-mentaiko Cream Pasta with cured egg yolk. It features minimalist meets earthy design in keeping with the aesthetic of the hotel, as well as an outdoor patio and a private dining room that’s located in the fire station’s former handball court.

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