grand avenue to break ground next month, but what about that loan?
Looking for information on Downtown LA?
Angelenic is the essential news resource for those living, working and visiting Downtown Los Angeles. Check out our homepage for the latest restaurant, retail, and cultural news in the neighborhood.
RSS or email feeds make it easy to receive angelenic in your inbox every morning!
Exciting news from the Times today, with a report by Cara Mia DiMassa stating the Grand Avenue Project has moved groundbreaking up to next month after Related Cos. received a $100 million loan from Dubai-based Istithmar back in February.
Earlier this year, angelenic broke the story that the Frank Gehry-designed Grand Avenue Project was delayed until summer amid serious questions surrounding the project’s funding. That followed two previous delays last year.
Though the development team has received significant financial backing, that amounts to a small fraction of the total cost of the $3 billion project, which has risen by over $1.2 billion in the past year.
The infusion from Istithmar is a stepping stone for Related to secure a larger construction loan; construction cannot begin until that funding is in place. It’s unclear at this time how long that procurement process will be.
Related has yet to respond to inquiries regarding the project’s financing.
As Grand Avenue approaches groundbreaking, the architectural team is refining the design, working out details on the towers’ facades and unit interiors.
Despite a construction period of three years, the Times still takes on the oversupply issue:
There remain skeptics who wonder whether downtown L.A. is being overdeveloped with condo projects. In addition to Grand Avenue, there are a slew of residential towers rising around Staples Center, a 76-story tower proposed next to Pershing Square and other older office buildings being renovated for apartments.
Most agree that the current supply of condos will be steadily absorbed over the next few years, which is good news for the large-scale project. Furthermore, 2011 will be a different market altogether.
If Grand Avenue breaks ground as planned this time, all eyes will then fall on Houk Development Company to see Park Fifth realized. With LA Live’s 54-story convention center hotel construction climbing above street level, can Downtown squeak by with three grand slams?
-$3 billion predicament: grand avenue project delayed
-la times takes an ignorant stance on downtown market
Check out these related posts:
9 comments
What will be interesting to see, is what effect the new Metro Rail expansion will have on Downtown development.
Gold Line East and Expo Line are scheduled to begin service in the next few years. There is also the possibility of Red and/or Purple Line extensions to Santa Monica, the Downtown Connector and restored streetcar service.
I have a feeling developers will still plan with these developments in mind. Those with foresight know that a future Los Angeles is one that is much more concentrated and vertical.
From what I know about this project, it looks quite interesting and seems that it will bring some much needed park space, amenities and nightlife to the area. A project of this magnitude will take quite some time to finish and I would hope the housing slump is well past it’s trough once this is done. I applaude the visionaries and foreign investors that helped this project maintain its life.
Any amount of new residents is good news for Downtown. If it has to take a little longer, then so be it. Most people forget that people are still moving to L.A. in droves. Many of them come from other cities and don’t have the aversion to vertical urban spaces that native born Angelenos seem to be cursed with. These are people from Chicago, New York, Boston, and yes, even London, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul or Shanghai.
These kind of people are the ones who never understood why LA abandoned its downtown in the first place.
scott mercer, its true that many who embrace downtown are from other cities - other countries, and many who cant get over their dislike of downtown, are from LA. As we become more mobile, and the mix of residents from other places continues to grow, I think attitudes embracing downtown will become more favorable.
The sexy part of Grand Avenue is Frank Gehry, Mandarin Oriental, and the galleries. What doesnt get reported nearly as much is the significant portion of units set aside for low income residents, (how many low income units are part of LA LIVE?) as well as their attempts to reach out to the surrounding community and provide jobs.
And - the new park offers great promise - i still have hope that the court house buildings that block the park from the street will be razed. ideally both of them, but i would settle for just the one on the south side.
regarding the foreign investment, its great to get this and be saved by it. LA is a truly international, multicultural, - global city. We should welcome such investment, not be scared by it.
There’s a lot of non-natives in Downtown that wonder why we ever let the city center stagnate… but there are also a lot of natives (yours truly), who appreciate and love Downtown for all it is. It isn’t exclusive to outsiders who may be more familiar with an urban environment — it’s happening all over.
Like I said before, not everyone is going to like Downtown or the idea of a Downtown at all, and that’s just fine.
I’m not concerned at all by the international financing. Captial will seek opportunities to invest and grow. I just find it interesting that outsiders are able to see the economic opportunities in downtown. My hunch is the vast majority of local investment dollars (i.e. SoCal) are still under the spell of downtown as a sort of bogeyman.
Look at Tom Gilmore. He’s an ex-New Yorker. Look at the Evo people in South Park. They are from Portland. Now this Grand Avenue project is funded by petro-dollars from the Middle East. I wonder if this pattern is just a fluke or indicative of a pattern. Just curious.
Regarding the questions and curiousity about why Downtown was abandoned in the first place and about the people moving to LA from elsewhere and the investment from outsiders, the answers are not so mysterious or unattainable.
Downtown Los Angeles’ history has been shaped by economic and historial factors ranging from post-World War II soldiers returning to live here having passed through on their way to the Pacific theater of the war and deciding they liked it here precisely because it was different from Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and many other older Mid-West and East Coast cities. Women workers filling in the factory jobs came from elsewhere and felt more opportunity could be had here and they stayed.
The post World War II boom psychology of the time was one of economic prosperity with owning one’s home with a yard and a backyard BBQ and a swimming pool and garage as a goal. Downtown was not where these goals could be attained.
This happened nationwide but Los Angeles had room for expansion and (sub)urban sprawl that made it unique and more conducive for people to attain their goal. Hence the sprawl that has exspanded the region into the megalopolis that it is along with all the accompanying traffic, smog, and other problems that today ironically contribute to making living in a downtown “loft” so desirable for the new urbanites…lol.
Factor in the industries like aerospace companies that provided jobs as well as those like the oil industry that worked to dismantle the rail car public transportation system, promoting the new freeways as the future of modern living and you start to get an idea about Downtown LAs history.
The advent of the shopping mall affected many downtowns across the US but especially here.
White flight to the suburbs (and the economic base that went with it) has it’s role as well.
For many the incentive for moving to LA was to break from the past, and reinvent oneself whether seeking stardom in the movies, moving away from states with entrenched Jim Crow laws, practicing or starting up a new religion or spiritual pursuit…etc.
It’s all there in books, novels, movies and historical documents if one cares to look. Overall what has shaped Downtowns varied past, present and future has been and continues to be economics in one way or another.
What I’ve always been intrigued by is the dual and seemingly separate economic bases of the companies, firms and supporting infrastructure that made up Downtown and cultural entities like the Music Center and Disney Concert Hall and the disconnected wealth of the movie industry that is focused on the Westside. There are exceptions (Geffen Contemporary) but so much potential exists for more investment in and interaction with the cultural and ecomonic viability of Downtown.
I also know that the question could be rephrased as “Why not Downtown?” and some would answer: Malibu, Beverly Hills, Manahattan Beach, Santa Monica, Palos Verdes…etc. as I’ve heard so often.
I’ll take Downtown.
Joey, disagree somewhat. People obviously moved to the suburbs, as they did in every other US city, but in LA many more simply never lived downtown and the city developed around it’s thriving neighborhoods and districts. The false dichotomy I often see, either Downtown “urban” living or suburban, simply isn’t in effect Los Angeles. Urban living options abound; Downtown is simply another one, and a far better one these days that it’s been in the past. I grew up in Chicago, and while of course we went downtown for cultural amenities, the vast majority of citizens there don’t live in the Loop, nor spend much time there after work. It’s a city that like LA lives in it’s varied neighborhoods. The answer for most to “why not Downtown” are not the cities you list (people that live in those wealthy oceanside cities, with the exception of possibly a few in SM, would never be candidates aesthetically for Downtown), but rather Hollywood, Mid-City, Silver Lake, Miracle Mile, Los Feliz, Lincoln Heights, Koreatown, Carthay, 3rd St. etc etc.
Alex, I see the point you’re making but I guess we’ll agree to disagree somewhat. I’m aware that one could compare Chicago and LA with a thriving daytime Downtown work force by day but people leaving by night and say that in LA more people just didn’t live Downtown leaves out that Downtown was thriving core of civic and even residential activity when those other wealthy enclaves I mentioned were fields and dirt roads. Downtown had the major hotels, apartments buildings, mansions, political infrstructure and social institutions in the city. It also had the major department stores, that by the 1950’s -60’s were Broadway, May Co, Robinsons, Bullocks, as well as smaller stores, habadasheries, groceries, restaurants , movie theaters and churches that brought people from the surrounding neighborhoods you mentioned. Various factors like urban renewal, the advent of the suburbs, and malls etc. were instrumental in the economic decisions that removed some or most of those pieces and attractions that made Downtown a hub of activity and a desirable option for residency. What I’m referencing is downtowns history over a long period from 1900 -1970. One can choose to underplay the importance of those elements but they are the same things that people now choosing to live here bemoan the lack of today giving an indication of what used to be here. When I stated the answers to “Why not downtown?” and mentioned those other cities and the wealthy folks who live there I wasn’t speaking of the current day as I’m aware of those wealthy residents not being candidates aesthetically for Downtown…ever. I was speaking about a time farther back when the wealthiest citizens lived downtown and it’s surrounding neighborhoods and Bev. Hills and even Hollywood were brand new outposts. By mid century when the post war mentality was optimistically looking towards the future there was little value placed on choosing to live in an already declining downtown. LA’s history for better or worse has been shaped by the automobile in ways that Chicago and other cities never were. The building of the freeways surrounding the core also broke up neighborhoods that cut into the residential capacity of the area and provided a population that used downtown. Boyle Heights was altered significantly, and the areas where the freeways interchange and criss cross had hundreds of homes and apartment buildings removed, so that the options for “choosing ” to live Downtown became extremely limited and by the 1960’s the thinking and reality was that people who lived Downtown lived there because they had to.
Koreatown was not always called Koreatown and Wilshire Blvd was quite the tony neighorhood albeit linear and geared towards the automobile but with Bullocks Wilshire, I. Magnins, smaller expensive stores, restaurants, and high end residential hotels and apartments. It was an extension of Downtown indicating the importance and viability of the urban center.
Leave a Comment