Two things are sorely lacking downtown: greenery and condos.
Developer Barry Shy is offering a remedy, of sorts, for both.
He has three condo projects wending their way through the approval process that, if they go through as planned, will add 854 more units to the Historic Core.
All three – at 601 S. Main St., 920 S. Hill St. and 955 S. Broadway – will add a dash of greenery to the concrete jungle. They will use “greenscaping,” with the larger 920 S. Hill project featuring a 40-foot-high “green wall” and all three slated to sport plants along their respective adjacent alleys.
“Downtown is so underparked, with so little greenery,” said Kate Bartolo, Shy’s land-use consultant. “What we’re trying to do with these projects is turn a little bit of downtown’s concrete corridors into a greenbelt.”
Each of the three, now in the entitlement process, will rise from sites now used as surface parking lots. They are expected to hit the market in late 2017 or early 2018.
As part of an effort to build community support prior to city hearings, details on the 920 S. Hill and 955 S. Broadway projects will be presented this week to the Central City Association; a briefing on the 601 S. Main project will be presented to the association next month.
Bartolo said the loft-style condo towers will be priced to attract first-time homebuyers. The Omega, as the 601 S. Main project is called, will have 452 units; 920 S. Hill will have 239; and 955 S. Broadway will have 163. All have been designed by downtown architect David Takacs and will have ground-floor retail space.
According to Rhonda Slavik, director of business development for condo marketer Polaris Pacific in San Francisco, demand for condos downtown is high and rising. But only two condo projects are under construction: Greenland USA’s Metropolis project, set to open next year with about 300 units, and Trumark Urban’s 1050 S. Grand Ave. development, with about 150 units.
Migrating Downtown
Mitch Wexler’s first order of business after he took the reins of Fragomen Del Rey Bernsen & Loewy’s L.A. office last year was to entice a more diverse group of clients to hire his law firm for their immigration legal needs.
“The L.A. office for a long time was a good, healthy practice,” said Wexler, managing partner of the firm’s offices in Los Angeles and Irvine. “But we served a lot of national clients, and my goal was to really develop a more local practice.”
Fragomen, which has 47 offices around the world, relies heavily on other law firms that don’t practice immigration law to refer clients, he said. But that proved difficult to accomplish from the firm’s longtime home in West Los Angeles.
Specifically, Fragomen’s L.A. office was tucked in a heavily residential area near Olympic Boulevard and the 405 freeway, meaning other law firms were few and far between.
That’s why Wexler inked a $2 million deal to lease 13,272 square feet in the Citigroup Center downtown for eight years. Fragomen’s 50 employees – including 10 lawyers – started moving into the space in July and the firm plans to host a grand opening next month.
Now that Fragomen’s attorneys work in the heart of the L.A. legal industry, Wexler expects business development will soon flourish.
“Just in the last few years, downtown has gotten to be so vibrant,” he said. “It’s very, very different now and we want to be a part of it.”
Museum Food
Downtown is about to be abuzz with more action than usual with this month’s opening of the Broad Museum and the adjacent Otium Restaurant. The contemporary art museum – with its honeycombed exterior – is being built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. It is located downtown, at 221 S. Grand Ave., next door to Walt Disney Concert Hall, and will feature the 2,000-work Broad collection of contemporary work by artists including Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Barbara Kruger and Kara Walker.
Otium, at 222 S. Hope St., is being opened by Bill Chait, an L.A. restaurateur and managing partner of Sprout L.A., and chef Timothy Hollingsworth. It will feature an open kitchen and menu items that are cultivated from sustainable ingredients grown in the garden of the restaurant’s mezzanine.
Spot prawns with basmati rice and heirloom tomato tart with burrata and petit basil are among the contemporary American cuisine offerings on the menu.
Gary Toebben, chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said both openings are exciting news for the downtown business community.
“The Broad Museum will attract a large number of new visitors to downtown Los Angeles and other downtown attractions,” Toebben said. “The opening of the Otium next to the museum will create a symbiotic relationship that will be good for the visitors, employees and residents in the Grand Avenue neighborhood. One good investment usually spawns another and that is certainly what is happening here.”
The Broad is scheduled to open Sept. 20.
Staff reporters Howard Fine, Cale Ottens and Karen Jordan contributed to this column. #DTLA is compiled by Senior Managing Editor Jonathan Diamond. He can be reached at [email protected].
