Obama Endorses CA High-Speed Rail, Among Others

California voters who approved proposition 1A last November will begin to see the outcomes of their decision, now at the federal level. At a press conference today, President Obama delivered a speech expressing his support of a national high-speed rail network, and outlining a plan for its implementation. Flanked by Vice President Biden and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Obama identified 10 regions across the nation where high-speed rail is needed and where it can work. The California High Speed Rail Authority's routes from San Diego to San Francisco and Sacramento were included in that list. Absent was the belligerent and fantastical MagLev route from Anaheim to Las Vegas.

The President announced a system-wide earmark of $8 billion in initial funding, to be followed by $1 billion per year for five following years. While the sum is barely a drop in the massive $787 billion stimulus package proposed by the administration, the passage of prop 1A late last year secures an additional $19.4 billion for California's share of the rail. Whether the state can even fathom an amount that high right now is another question. But California is the only state of the roughly 18 identified that has already passed legislation in support of the project at the state level.

In Sacramento, the prospect of the rail line is a pressing and popular matter. The Rail Authority has already identified the route of the line and are in the process of securing the land and composing the EIR. City leaders from almost every jurisdiction along the route have expressed avid support for the line. Racked by traffic congestion and hungry for added jobs, many cities have already developed plans for area TODs (transit-oriented development). With an added 13 million people by 2050, California's population density will begin to mirror countries like France, Germany, and Japan - countries that already have extensive high-speed rail lines hurtling their citizens along at speeds sometimes upwards of 200 mph. One question - who do they expect to board at a station in Sylmar?

UCLA Dorms to Dominate "the Hill"

UCLA has just announced plans for a massive expansion of its housing capacity on the residential portion of the campus known as "the Hill." The $375 million project will encompass 1,500 beds split across four new residential halls, in addition to a new fitness facility, a new dining area, and a 425-seat multi-purpose room. Upon projected completion in 2013, the university will achieve its stated goal of guaranteed housing for 4 years for undergraduates and 2 years for graduate students. With its current capacity for 3 years of guaranteed housing, 90% of freshmen are living in cramped triples built as doubles.

The project, which is forecast to be classified LEED Silver, will include trash and recycling chutes (a first for campuses nationwide), low-flow toilets, storm water collection drains, and high performance window glazes, among others. Enhanced landscaping and an extended Bruin Walk will welcome pedestrians to a greener version of the Hill. The buildings will range in height from a three-story mixed use complex to a nine-story residential tower.

The new buildings will be largely clustered along DeNeve Drive, the slender lane that snakes from the center of campus up into Bel-Air. Construction will commence in the fall of this year and will have impacts on area traffic and parking. The central section of DeNeve Drive will be made a one-way street and Charles E Young Dr West will be temporarily closed. Students have already expressed concerns over the auditory intrusions construction will inevitably introduce. With weekday construction beginning at 7 am, students can expect a rude awakening. And of course the big question - officials assured the Daily Bruin that "there will be low noise levels during finals week." I would think 3 obnoxious freshmen cramped into 100 square feet would be enough to send anyone packing to the other side of campus to study.

City OKs Libeskind Skyscraper

The Los Angeles City Planning Commission granted approval to a proposed skyscraper that would rise near the Convention Center between Figueroa and Flower streets downtown. The project is the second of two large towers planned for downtown with Korean investment. Both projects (the other being the Korean Air project at Figueroa and 7th Sts.) have been criticized as too large and cataclysmic, even for this part of the city. The recession-era timing may also seem strange. But bold developers citywide are scrambling to commence projects - taking advantage of development-hungry bureaucracies and cheap construction costs - in hopes of fervent demand upon completion.

The 43-story skyscraper is being designed by Daniel Libeskind, the famous and somewhat controversial architect behind the flailing Freedom Tower in New York City. Program calls for 273 residential units stacked above an eight-level groundfloor parking platform, as well as street-oriented retail, restaurants, and spa. Libeskind is a proud member of the profession's new guard of "starchitects," (in)famous for flashy, tourist-friendly icons designed to dazzle, and desperate for attention. These buildings are caustic to the city because they ignore their contexts and instead focus on themselves. Downtown's wealth of these buildings has created a dizzying array of built islands, and has done little to improve the urban experience.

LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne blames this phenomenon on the city's "all-or-nothing" approach to development. Libeskind's tower will replace a surface parking lot, but dozens of other parking lots still plague the city's center. The city's permitting process, especially downtown, is so lengthy and formidable that few smaller scale developers even attempt to build there. The resulting mixture is of ugly, underutilized asphalt and daunting, expensive megaprojects. The modest, three- to ten-story resdiential blocks that create the connective tissue in a successful city are missing. This city has been clamoring for big-name architecture for years; now that we have it, we don't know how to do it. Be careful what you wish for, LA.

Eli Broad Taunts LAUSD with Cash for Arts School

Eli Broad recently pledged close to half a million dollars to support the enrollment of minority students at Juilliard, the elite New York City arts academy. This has left LAUSD back home in Los Angeles wondering - where's our money? The billionaire developer-philanthropist has proven his dedication to the city of Los Angeles and to the arts with tens of millions of dollars in donations over the years. He has mentioned an interest in supporting the arts at LA schools before, but this time it is critical. The school district plans to open Central Los Angeles High School #9 - a new flagship arts school - in the fall, but as of yet have no director for the school and little clue as to how to run it.

The school, which is in its last phase of construction, set the district back about $250 million. But because the school was built on the desirable district-owned Grand Avenue lot , an additional $190 million was spent to relocate the district's offices. The school has received much acclaim during construction, both for its proximity to the burgeoning arts corridor on Grand Ave downtown, and for its curious design by Austrian firm Coop Himmelblau. But as the 2009/10 school year approaches, district officials worry about the school's ability to open and operate smoothly.

Joining others, Broad has suggested the school be managed by an outside organization but continue to receive funding from the district. This charter school arrangement has been extremely successful in rehabbing other struggling local schools. But the district refuses. Another option is to delay the opening of the school for one more year, until everyone can truly agree on its mode of operation. But that delay would be costly and inefficient. Construction is nearing completion and the idea of maintaining a vacant school is both embarrassing and depressing. Whatever happens, it has to happen quick - Eli Broad won't be dangling his millions forever. If we don't suit his fancy here, he may just pack up and move back to Detroit. Or worse: New York.

Sorry Silverlake - Sunset Strip Has the "Buzz"

Late last month at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, planning professors from USC and Columbia University presented what they call the "Geography of Buzz." It's a collection of "smart maps" depicting where entertainment "buzz" happens in New York City and Los Angeles. The authors sifted through 300,000 Getty images from 6,000 promotional events to create the maps through a photo-tagging process. The categories investigated were film, fashion, art, music, theater, and television.

Residents of hipster neighborhoods in both cities might be surprised by the results. The epicenter of LA buzz occurs in an arc stretching from Beverly Hills to Hollywood, roughly along the Sunset Strip. NOT in the much-touted "new centers of taste" - Silverlake and Echo Park. The authors explained this simply as a law of numbers (not enough events, parties, photo ops happen in those areas), and thus density. The majority of tastemakers are not risk-takers. And for good reason. If I want to host a fashion show and want the maximum number of attendees and photographers, I want it to be where the fashionistas and the paparazzi already are, not in some underground warehouse out east.

Admittedly, "buzz" is something that is difficult to quantify but it is something we all understand. The geography of buzz has important implications in real estate, and doesn't necessarily follow the same laws. The creative class - artists, filmmakers, designers, writers - is an extremely influential group and are extremely valuable to the economies of global cities like Los Angeles and New York. As we move into the digital age, it is more and more difficult to understand where things physically happen and how our cities are shaped by those events. Rather than experiencing a loss of place, we are becoming more and more equipped to understand how our cities work, in a digital way. And you thought hipsters took too many snapshots.

Koreatown vs... Little Bangladesh?

Yesterday the New York Times shed light on a heated but little-known controversy at the heart of the city - the fight for name recognition between LA's Koreans and Bangladeshis. The six-square mile area that is home to the largest Korean population outside of Korea is apparently not recognized as a neighborhood on the city's official maps. So in October, many were surprised to learn that an application had been filed with a city to name a small area within Koreatown - Little Bangladesh.

The application comes at a time when there are believed to be some 15,000 Bangladeshis living in the city. It is an attempt to recognize the fast-growing and underappreciated Bangladeshi population here. But the move has been met with stringent opposition by area Korean groups who point to the jungle of Korean restaurants, businesses, and signage, in lieu of an official designation. But to the average Angeleno who references Thomas Bros. or drives past scenes like the one above, Koreatown is very much a reality. Little Bangladesh, frankly, is not.

Even city councilman Tom LaBonge, whose district includes parts of Koreatown, is fighting fiercely for Korean civic groups, saying that he has doubts about the level of commitment on the part of the Bangladeshis. Ethnic enclaves are certainly not new to Los Angeles (Byzantine-Latino Quarter, Chinatown, Filipinotown, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Little Tokyo, Thaitown) but this conflict is different for two reasons. First is the sheer size and weight of Koreatown. Its influence is unquantifiable city- and even region-wide. Secondly, it represents one ethnic minority attempting to supplant another. Historically, tension has been primarily between existing whites and incoming immigrants. A neighborhood council boardmember put it nicely: "it's nice to embrace other communities, as long as it's not in our backyard. Or in our front yard." Ahh, good ol' LA cohesion. Have we learned nothing from the riots?

Ad Campaign Pokes at Marina's Imminent Demise

"Rodeo Drive will still be there tomorrow."

The marina, apparently, will not. A bikini-clad woman on a boat accompanies that statement in a new ad released by the Marina del Rey Convention and Visitors Bureau. The bureau is making a sneaky attempt to lure visitors from far and wide before the marina and surrounding businesses and attractions are, well, gone. The above rendering shows a worst-case scenario of flooding up to 20 feet. Researchers at the Pacific Institute, a California seawater think tank, put predictions closer to 6 feet by the year 2100. Sea level rise is an effect of thermal expansion, the global warming phenomenon whereby water molecules physically expand.

The worst-hit areas will be low-lying coastal regions and man-made environments. Parts of the Bay Area, like San Francisco airport and residential Foster City, were built over landfill and sit dangerously low to the water. Marina del Rey, the nation's largest small boat harbor, is also an artificial environment and faces similar risks. More threatened however, are the areas just to the north (Venice) and just to the south (Playa del Rey) of the harbor. The entire stretch of land covered in the above image is part of the Ballona wetlands and was historically a natural marsh that fed run water from the Ballona creek into the ocean. The marsh would flood during rainy season, and dry up during the dry season. Today however, the area is almost 100% built up. And proximity to the ocean means prices are not cheap.

Since it opened in 1965, Marina del Rey has been the pleasure capital for LA's nautical elite. Miami-style high-rise condos and luxury hotels have sprouted up along its fringes. The latest slew of these however, have been heavily hit by the recent real estate dropout. Perhaps consumers know all too well about the area's watery future. So go ahead - visit Marina del Rey. Just don't stay there... you're much better off shopping in Beverly Hills.

Metro Board Chooses Right-of-Way Option in Expo Phase II

The Metro and Expo authority boards voted unanimously last week in favor of the Metro-owned Exposition right-of-way route for the second phase of the Expo light rail connecting downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. That route follows the rail line that was used by the Pacific Electric red car system that was eradicated in the 1950s. The option is cheaper, faster, more convenient, and would attract higher ridership than the alternative.

Opposition to this route came from residents of the Cheviot Hills area directly to the north of the Exposition right-of-way. That neighborhood is composed predominantly of upscale, single-family homes. Residents have voiced concerns that the light-rail line would be noisy, ugly, and would bring urban blight to the plush region. They tried in vain to convince the board that a route traveling westward on Venice Blvd and then turning northward up Sepulveda Blvd would attract more riders.

The other half of the decision was to route the terminal stretch of the line down Colorado Ave through downtown Santa Monica to end at Ocean Ave at the Pier, as opposed to running down Olympic Blvd. Now, the principle remaining controversy is whether certain stations should remain at-grade or be sunken underground - the safer but more expensive alternative. The construction authority has proposed at-grade stations at Overland, Westwood, Military, Sepulveda, Barrington and Centinela, some of which are high-traffic crossings.

First Century City, then the 10 freeway and now this? Cheviot Hills just can't seem to keep the big, bad city from closing in around it.

Korean Air Unleashes Plans for Downtown Megatower

The LA Times reported today that Korean Air, the South Korean transport conglomerate, plans to demo the existing Wilshire Grand hotel and replace it with a pair of sleek office/hotel skyscrapers. The company, which bought the 57-year old property in 1989, claims it has accumulated a special reserve of cash in anticipation of the economic downturn and argues that with sinking construction costs, there is no better time to build. The development will be the latest and greatest of a long string of Korean investment in Los Angeles. If granted approval from the city, groundbreaking could commence in 2011 with completion set for 2014.

The existing Wilshire Grand, while underused and aging, is located on a prime piece of downtown real estate - the corner of Figueroa St and Wilshire Blvd. The location, which is convenient to Korean Air's current LA headquarters, is significant because it is outside of the large and dense Koreatown neighborhood. The $1 billion 1.8 million sf center, built by influential LA developer Thomas Properties, will be an important testament to the growing clout of Koreans and Korean Americans in this city.

Plans call for a 40-story luxury hotel/condo tower connected to a 60-story office building by groundlevel retail and a public plaza. The property is located across the street from the 7th St Metro station. David Martin of endeared downtown architecture firm AC Martin will be the design architect. Rendering shows a sun-friendly north-south orientation and energy-generating photovoltaic panels. It will be the first new office tower built in Downtown since 1992. It may also mean hungry downtowners will no longer have to venture past Vermont Ave for their bulgogi fix.

W Hotel: Bring Press Junket Back to Hollywood

The W Hotel & Residences, under construction at the corner of Hollywood Blvd and Vine St, has announced plans to try to attract the 'press junket' phenomenon of movie marketing back to the industry's historic district. The intersection, which is well-known for its historic centrality in the movie-making business, has lost most of its significance since its heyday. Gatehouse Capital, the developer of the $350 million complex, declared last week that the building has been specially designed to accommodate those events, which are weekend-long marketing soirees used to promote a film and its stars to a glut of reporters.

For years, the majority of these gatherings have been hosted by luxury hotels in Beverly Hills, with about 90% taking place at the Four Seasons there. The ambitious effort by the W development is part of a larger trend in the attempt to bring components of the film industry back to their historical geographic roots in Hollywood. The biggest of these changes has been the Hollywood & Highland theater-shopping-entertainment complex down the street. That investment has almost single-handedly brought Hollywood back onto the tourist radar, and has prompted soaring real estate prices along the boulevard.

The design and construction features necessary for such a specific use however, are not simple. Many hotel rooms have to be big enough for camera and film crews to tape celebrity interviews, often with multiple extra-large bathrooms for hair and make-up teams. The convention floors must be wired for extreme electrical output and should utilize fiber optic cabling. All of these on top of the already restrictive zoning and building conditions. With respect to the adjoining historic Taft building, the hotel has a height limit of 15 stories. And built over a Metro Red Line station, the building must also conform to egress requirements for the underground station. Come November, we'll see if the Hollywood challenger can dominate the elite Beverly Hills incumbent.

Despite Inner Strife, MOCA Creeps into Little Tokyo

On Monday, The Museum of Contemporary Art announced plans for a major three-story, 90,000 sf expansion, to be built in a parking lot adjacent to their current Geffen Contemporary warehouse location in Little Tokyo. Program calls for 18,000 sf of exhibition space, 6,000 sf of educational space, and a whopping 66,000 sf of storage, to help unload some of the pressure at the Grand Ave location. The plan will be presented to the Zoning Administration on April 14 and will require subsequent approval from the Community Redevelopment Agency, which has jurisdiction over downtown development.

But this comes at a funny time for the museum. Last November MOCA released news of a searing financial quandary, spurred by reckless spending and a shrinking endowment. The institution was bailed out soon after by billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad. But Broad's $30 million gift was an exertion of powerful control, and prompted the resignation of MOCA's director Jeremy Strick. As he has done with LACMA, Broad quickly took the reigns, shuttering the Little Tokyo annex and slashing budget and staff by 20%. Whether Broad has been given or has exerted too much control is debatable and frankly, moot - no one else has his will or spending power.

The project will be a slow one - 5 years until groundbreaking after approval and 18 months of construction thereafter. But with the museum walking on dangerously thin ice, no one is complaining about slow growth. Dubious of bank credit and public contribution, the project will be funded exclusively by private donations. An interesting design feature of the museum's plan is a glass partition system enclosing the storage space, allowing visitors to see pieces that aren't on exhibit. Now if only the museum's frivolous spending practices could be made more transparent.