of all things, another parking lot for south park
This time last year, owners of the quarter-acre property on the northeast corner of 12th and Flower razed the old Frank L. Robinson Building, a small industrial structure which had occupied the land since 1915.
Since then the empty lot has sat unused, but over the last week contractors have been busy on-site plowing up dirt to lay new infrastructure — all part of big plans to downgrade its land use to a parking lot.
With the debut of LA Live’s second phase just around the corner, the quick call to action is no surprise as parking revenue potential in South Park could reach new heights. Unfortunately, the change happening here goes against the grain of the vision for Downtown’s new entertainment district.
To drive that point home, on the other three sides of the same intersection, South Group is planning its next residential complex known as South Figueroa, Kor Group is leasing out a large restaurant space to Blowfish Sushi to Die For, and Monian Group maintains course to build LA Central, a complimentary development to LA Live.
14 comments
When is South Group breaking ground on South Figueroa?
late 2009 i believe??
^ Probably at the earliest, and even then still an overly optimistic prediction.
That’s why it’s too early to single out the owner of the new parking lot for blame. The reason being that the largely residential projects mentioned by Mr Friday probably won’t become reality for quite awhile. And if things get really tough, they may even be cancelled.
Too bad too, because more blacktop around South Park doesn’t help the environment and certainly doesn’t add life to the general vicinity. On that, I definitely agree with Stephen Friday.
Going beyond parking lots ruining downtown, the owner of the now demolished Frank Robinson building would deserve a lashing if his property were an architectural, historic jewel. But it wasn’t, so the best anyone can hope for right now is that the Robinson’s replacement, the parking lot, at least not end up being a bumpy asphalt surface with weeds popping out of the cracks, and often litter and dust flying about, as is true of quite a few parking lots in the central city.
If it was a historical jewel it would never been torn down in the first place.
Isnt the 1133 Hope structure suppose to rise across the street? Geez, sometimes I wish the South Park boom wouldve been launched in the early 2000s, who knows how many towers and how established this area wouldve been if fully developed by this time we possibly couldve been already working on a South Park boom v 2.0 but oh well. I just hope LA Central gets up and running really soon.
Will there be retail space included in the parking structure at least?
I liked the building too, but it was economically and socially obsolete. The value of the land far surpassed any possible use of the existing building.
If someone were to come to you and say “your building is worth 5M, but the empty lot is worth 10M” what would you do? I would grab a sledge-hammer and start tearing it down myself.
The lots are only temporary. It’s a way to generate revenue until the real estate market starts to pick up and building residential and/or mixed use projects make fiscal sense. I would rather see a parking lot than a dust-bowl.
Brigham, there’s to be no parking structure – just a Grade A surface parking lot.
Joni Mitchell eat your heart out!
Let’s go lynch the owner. And when we’re done, head further south and get that Daily Trojan writer while we’re at it.
David Keane: And if your dog was sick, yet her old bones were worth a little money if sold to the glue factory, what would you do?
What the people on this blog are trying to do is build a neighborhood, not sell a few condos, like yourself.
That’s good Ryan. Lets compare building a parking lot to euthanasia.
I’m all for smart development in South Park (read: avoiding surface level parking), however lets not be melodramatic here.
Ryan: I think that’s the difference between Republicans and Democrats (in general); one wants to make money, the other to make the world a better place. Oh yeah, I went down the political party path, I can feel the knives already!
In actuality, the political path you went down turns out to be no more realistic and legitimate than the Yellow Brick Road leading to the Wizard of Oz.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2682730