Blog

By Bianca Barragan for Curbed Los Angeles | Read the original article here

Ownership of the Hollywood and Highland shopping center could be changing. The Real Deal reports that owner CIM Group and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority have listed the roughly 450,000-square-foot tourist magnet for sale.

Sources tell The Real Deal a sale could bring in as much as $300 million.

Located along the Walk of Fame, Hollywood and Highland stands out, perhaps in large part because of it unusual design, inspired by a Babylonian film set from a 1916 epic directed by Birth of a Nation’s D.W. Griffith.

The retail center opened in 2001 and has been owned by CIM since 2004. Hollywood and Highland holds a Sephora, a Forever 21, and a fancy bowling alley. Rascal Flatts was supposed to have a restaurant in the mall, but the country music trio was later sued by their partner in the restaurant deal (the partner claimed the musicians pocketed the money instead of using it to build the eatery).

The shopping center sits above Metro’s Hollywood/Highland subway station, and its namesake intersection received a scramble crosswalk two years ago.

The sale would not include the neighboring Dolby Theatre, which hosts the Oscars and is owned by the city. (CIM is the operator of the theater.)

Head over to The Real Deal for the full story.

By Bianca Barragan for Curbed Los Angeles | Read the original article here

A highly anticipated apartment, hotel, and shopping complex designed by Frank Gehry atop Bunker Hill takes a big step forward today. Developers for The Grand (formerly the Grand Avenue Project) announced they have secured $630 million in construction financing for the $1 billion project.

Pre-construction work, including demolition on a parking structure on the property, will begin this month on the Grand Avenue site. The property sits just east of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, as new renderings show.

A groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for sometime in the “upcoming months,” say developers Related Companies and the China-based CORE US, a partnership between China Harbour Engineering Company and CCCG Overseas Real Estate. Related has long said it plans to break ground on the project in 2018.

When complete, The Grand will include a 20-story hotel, retail and entertainment, and a 39-story residential tower with 128 condos, 214 market-rate apartments, and 86 affordable housing units. The Grand’s two towers will rise on a parking lot just east of the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Any forward movement on the project will likely be welcomed by boosters who’ve waited for over a decade to see the bulk of the project come to fruition. (Related once hoped to get the project underway in 2007.)

Other elements of the Grand Avenue project have already been built, including the Emerson apartment tower and Grand Park.

Bunker Hill is on an upswing, development-wise. A major project planned at the corner of Fourth and Hill would bring an 88-story tower, hundreds of hotel rooms and condos, retail space, and an elementary school to the neighborhood.

At the site of a former Marriott on Figueroa near Third Street, a 77-story tower is planned that would be taller than the Wilshire Grand. And at the site of the World Trade Center on Figueroa and Fourth, prolific landlord and developer Jamison plans to put in a 41-story tower with 750 residential units.

By Jenna Chandler for Curbed Los Angeles | Read the original article here

Development battles in Santa Monica have largely fizzled out. Now, two City Councilmembers seeking reelection say they want to end the building wars for good.

A measure on the November 6 ballot would require developers to get the approval of a “supermajority” of the Santa Monica City Council to deviate from the city’s building height and density limits.

If Measure SM passes, for the next 10 years, developers wanting to build taller or denser would need a “yes” vote from five of seven members of the City Council. Right now, the threshold is four votes.

That’s an important distinction, says Kevin McKeown, who co-sponsored the measure with Sue Himmelrich. Both councilmembers are seeking reelection.

Historically, votes on some of the biggest, most high-profile development projects in Santa Monica have been split, McKeown says.

“Measure SM eliminates those squeakers that previously got through on the barest majority vote,” he says. “It is significantly more difficult for a developer to earn that fifth vote to go beyond our adopted plans.”

Councilmembers Gleam Davis and Terry O’Day oppose Measure SM. They argue it would actually incite more fights over development.

“I was so looking forward to having an election on the ballot where we would not have development wars,” Davis said in June, when the council discussed it. “Now we are voluntarily inviting election wars.”

“The circus is coming to town again,” O’Day said. “Here’s the sideshow for development fighting.”

Two years ago, a far more extreme proposal to curtail building heights in Santa Monica appeared on the ballot. Measure LV would have subjected any new construction taller than 32 feet—the equivalent of two stories—to voter approval.

That measure was defeated at the ballot box, with more than 56 percent of residents voting against it.

But McKeown says it would be a “mistake” to ignore the 44 percent of residents who voted in favor of Measure LV.

If developers want “to exceed our limits in any way, they’d better come to us with a truly spectacular project,” he says.

Measure SM has an exemption for housing projects that are 100 percent affordable and projects on school district property. And, according to the Santa Monica Lookout, the measure wouldn’t affect development projects that have already been proposed.

The measure was placed on the November 6 ballot measure on June 26 on a 4-2 vote of the City Council.

“The premise of this supermajority provision is that if something is a really good idea, it will get five votes,” Davis said at the time. This measure “isn’t getting five votes tonight.”

“By its own definition, it might not be a very good idea,” she said.

By Elijah Chiland for Curbed Los Angeles | Read the original article here

Tunneling is officially underway on Metro’s Purple Line subway extension to the Westside of Los Angeles.

The first round of tunneling started Tuesday beneath the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and La Brea Avenue.

Twin 450-foot-long tunnel boring machines (dubbed Elsie and Soyeon) will carve out about 60 feet of tunnel daily for the next two years, en route to the Wilshire/Western station, where Purple Line trains now turn back for Downtown Los Angeles.

The first phase of the Purple Line extension broke ground in 2014 and is expected to open in 2023. The $2.82 billion project will add a little under 4 miles of track to the subway route, bringing it to the intersection of Wilshire and La Cienega boulevards.

Eventually, the extension will bring the train all the way to the VA hospital, just west of the 405 on the border of Westwood and Brentwood. The project is being constructed in three segments.

Phase two will run between La Cienega and Constellation Boulevard in Century City. The third phase will add a stop near UCLA en route to the VA.

Altogether, the extension will add roughly 9 miles to the Purple Line and is expected to carry nearly 60,000 riders daily.

But the project isn’t popular with Beverly Hills residents and school officials who have sued repeatedly to block the second leg of the project, arguing that tunneling work beneath the Beverly Hills High School campus could pose a threat to the safety of students. Metro officials have steadfastly denied these claims.

Last week, students, teachers, and school administrators in the city gathered at Will Rogers Memorial Park to protest the subway project.

Tunneling work hasn’t started yet on the second phase of the project, and Metro spokesperson Dave Sotero told Curbed last week that the agency selected a route that travels beneath the high school because that route “provides the greatest benefits with fewest impacts.” Another proposed route along Santa Monica Boulevard would have intersected with an earthquake fault.

Sotero says Metro will continue to look for unmapped oil wells beneath Beverly Hills out of “an abundance of caution.”

Protests and legal challenges notwithstanding, Metro expects all three phases of the project to be complete by 2026.

By Bianca Barragan for Curbed Los Angeles | Read the original article here

Netflix is doubling down on Hollywood. Today, developers of EPIC, a 13-story office development on Sunset Boulevard, announced that the streaming company has signed a lease for the entire building.

“EPIC is part of our continuing investment in LA and Hollywood,” Netflix’s chief financial officer David Wells said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be able to continue to grow our team there.”

EPIC is designed by Gensler, and will feature floor-to-ceiling windows, terraces, fire pits, and a rooftop deck. The building will also be outfitted with electric-car-charging stations, bike lockers, and showers.

Developed by Hudson Pacific Properties, EPIC is due to be complete in 2020. Netflix will move into the building in phases that same year. The company’s lease at EPIC expires in 2031.

Netflix has already rented the entirety of the 14-story ICON tower and almost 92,000 square in the five-story office building CUE. The company has extended its leases at both building for an additional five years.

Both ICON and CUE are located across the street from EPIC, on the Sunset Bronson Studios lot, and are also owned by Hudson Pacific Properties.

By Bianca Barragan for Curbed Los Angeles | Read the original article here

Two years ago, Google started leasing a massive airplane hangar in Playa Vista. On Tuesday, the tech giant moved in, says Playa Vista’s corporate blog.

In terms of size, the new location is an indisputable upgrade. The Spruce Goose hangar—which once housed Howard Hughes’s Hughes H-4 Hercules—is three times the size of the company’s Frank Gehry-designed offices in Venice, where Google has held offices since 2011.

The move to Playa Vista has been a long time coming. Google leased the 319,000-square-foot, seven-story-tall space in 2016.

At the time, the company planned to build structures inside the hangar, creating three stories and a mezzanine, the Los Angeles Times reported. That was expected to result in 525,000 square feet of office space inside the hangar.

Google’s new home was owned by The Ratkovich Company until 2016, when it was sold, reportedly to Japanese investors, who paid more than $300 million for the hangar and three adjacent buildings. At the time, all four buildings were already leased to Google for a 16-year period.

Google also spent $120 million in 2014 to purchase 12 acres of vacant land right next to the hangar.

The Spruce Goose hangar was built in 1943 to house the H-4 Hercules, aka the Spruce Goose, an enormous flying boat designed by Hughes’ company during World War II. (It flew once, for one minute, in 1947.)

The Spruce Goose now resides in a aviation museum in Oregon.

By Jenna Chandler for Curbed Los Angeles | Read the original article here

Plans to build an apartment complex on a Hollywood strip mall that houses an Out of the Closet thrift shop breezed through the city’s planning commission on Thursday.

The seven-story building would bring 270 apartments to Sunset Boulevard and El Centro, plus new street-level shops and restaurants and parking for 361 cars in an underground garage.

Sidewalks will be widened and the building’s architecture will feature “different textures, colors, [and] materials,” making this pocket of Hollywood more walkable, city planning staffers wrote in a report to the commission.

“The project will support Hollywood’s identity as an area of commerce, while bringing much-needed housing,” the report says.

The complex would wipe out the existing strip mall, located at 6200 Sunset, which also holds a pharmacy and Discount Tire Centers.

It’ll rise immediately to the west of Gower Gulch, and it will face the historic Palladium, which is poised to undergo a restoration and redevelopment with the addition of two 28-story towers.

Plans for 6200 Sunset now head to the Planning and Land Use Management Committee.

By Elijah Chiland for Curbed Los Angeles | Read the original article here

Los Angeles is known for its charming residential streets, lined with grassy parkways and dotted with single-family homes.

There are condo towers and courtyard apartments—but for better or for worse, LA’s image is a city of ranch homes and Craftsman bungalows.

It’s an image that was cemented by decisions that city planners and elected officials made in the decades following LA’s early 20th century boom years, when the city was growing most quickly.

Last month, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson blamed LA’s affordable housing crisis on its abundance of single-family neighborhoods.

Today, close to half of all developable land in the city is still set aside for single-family homes, not apartments or other forms of housing that could hold more people.

Just under two thirds of land in the city of Los Angeles is now zoned to allow residential construction, according to the Department of City Planning. Of that total, more than 75 percent is reserved for single-family homes or duplexes.

Other U.S. cities dedicate similarly large portions of land to single-family housing, but LA’s suburban-style streets stand in stark contrast to the density of big cities such as New York and Chicago.

But that wasn’t always the case.

In 1920, the city introduced its first zoning code, which put LA’s available land into five categories of land use, including single-family home construction. Though this was by far the most popular form of housing in LA’s sprawling urban environment, few parts of the city were off limits to larger projects.

As Andrew Whittemore, professor of land use and environmental planning at the University of North Carolina, points out in his essay “Zoning Los Angeles: a brief history of four regimes,” in 1933, less than 5 percent of the city’s zoned land was exclusively restricted to single-family homes.

Most residential properties at that time fell under a more flexible zoning designation that allowed for many different types of construction—including the bungalow courts and small multifamily buildings that can still be found alongside single-family homes in older neighborhoods like Silver Lake, Hollywood, and Venice.

But LA’s zoning rules became much more restrictive in the following decades.

By 1970, almost half the city was zoned for single-family use only, according to Greg Morrow, director of UC Berkeley’s Real Estate and Design program.

What happened?

In 1934, Congress passed the National Housing Act, creating the Federal Housing Administration. The new government agency promoted homeownership by guaranteeing home loans with long repayment periods that lenders might have otherwise been unwilling to give (prior to this time, buyers usually had to pay off home loans within five years, meaning that monthly mortgage payments were quite high).

Since taxpayers would be on the hook if buyers failed to pay back these government-backed mortgages, the FHA went to great lengths to minimize the risk of the loans.

Part of that, as Whittemore explains an article published in the Journal of Urban History,meant shying away from loans in neighborhoods that weren’t deemed “safe investment areas.”

To the agency, safe areas for investment were often those where residents were almost entirely white, as redlining maps from the era clearly illustrate. But racial demographics weren’t the only determining factor.

The FHA (now part of Carson’s own department) also at this time discouraged loans in areas where commercial buildings and apartment complexes abutted single-family homes—the idea being that a mix of building types made the neighborhood more susceptible to changes that could negatively affect property values.

In response to these lending policies, city planners across the United States sought to make urban neighborhoods more homogenous, clearly separating building types and creating lot size and setback requirements to make single-family neighborhoods as safe for investment as possible.

The effects of this were particularly felt in cities like Los Angeles, where plenty of land was still available for new developments.

In 1946, when Los Angeles updated its zoning code (creating the system still in use today), the city’s single-family zones were more fully defined—with nearly three pages of restrictions and regulations. Separate classifications were also created for duplexes and “suburban zones,” with similar parking and yard-size requirements.

These zoning rules helped to create the neatly arranged residential communities Angelenos today know and love, but they also severely limited available space for new development. That’s become a pressing concern as LA deals with a severe shortage of affordable housing.

“We’re clinging to this model—the old version of the American Dream,” housing advocate Mark Vallianatos tells Curbed. “It doesn’t make sense to reserve large portions of any city for only one home with a yard and just one family.”

Compounding the housing shortage is the legacy of plans for the city’s development made in the 1970s, when residents and local leaders sought to slow LA’s growth by limiting the amount of housing that developers could build.

As Morrow points out, Los Angeles was zoned to hold up to 10 million residents in 1960. By 1990, the city had capacity for just 3.9 million residents.

Today, that number has increased slightly but so has LA’s population—the city is home to roughly 4 million people. As of 2010, it was zoned to hold just 4.3 million residents.

To accommodate future residents, Vallianatos says single-family neighborhoods could be “sensitively densified.” Planners could allow property owners in these areas to build triplexes and fourplexes there—buildings that allow more people to live in these communities without sacrificing their low-slung character.

But that would likely garner strong resistance from homeowners, who fought hard to preserve, and even expand, LA’s single-family zones when the city introduced its community plans in the 1970s.

Likewise, Los Angeles planners are probably keenly aware of the political risk of tampering with zoning rules in single-family areas.

In the 1980s, the city of Long Beach eased restrictions in these areas to spur construction of affordable housing. Capitalizing on loopholes in this policy, developers replaced historic bungalows with hastily constructed apartment buildings, which critics derisively referred to as “crackerboxes.”

Discussing the city’s new Land Use Element, which will regulate future development, Long Beach planning bureau manager Linda Tatum said in March that allowing these apartments was “absolutely a mistake on the city’s part.”

In Land Use Element maps approved by the Long Beach City Council earlier this year, not a single one of the city’s single-family neighborhoods was altered in any way.

LA officials have shown some willingness to tamper with single-family zoning in areas near transit. In July, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a plan to adjust the zoning of several single-family blocks near stops on Metro’s Expo Line.

The new zoning rules will allow “neighborhood-scale mixed-use development that creates ground-floor commercial activity” with the “capacity for multifamily housing.”

Vallianatos says that Los Angeles and other nearby cities need to start thinking more seriously about “upzoning,” that is, allowing more dense forms of housing, in order to bring down skyrocketing home prices and reverse the discriminatory policies that kept low-income and non-white residents out of neighborhoods favored by the FHA.

“If you change the zoning a bit, you can keep some of the feel of the neighborhood,” he says. “But you open it up to a much wider diversity of people and ways to live.”