Hollywood Freeway cap park inches forward

US Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) has agreed to request the $5.85m necessary to begin prelimary studies and planning for the park. Though this is a tiny droplet in comparison to the estimated $950m necessary to build the park, supporters say it is a crucial step. The park, thought by many to be a pipe dream since its conception in 2006, would comprise 44 acres of parkland on a "cap" constructed over the freeway between Hollywood and Santa Monica Blvds. The park is seen as a much-needed addition of open space to an area of the city that has only .005 acres of parkland per resident. Friends of the Hollywood Central Park, the non-profit founded to get the project off the ground, says the majority of the money will come from private foundations. It is one of 2 cap parks planned for the Hollywood Freeway.

Source: Los Angeles Business Journal

City rejects supergraphics/Cahuenga peak compromise

Two of the city's most heated land use controversies collided this week when a prominent manufacturer of vinyl "supergraphics" offered to contribute to the Save the Cahuenga Peak fund, but only if their signs were allowed to remain. SkyTag, based in Beverly Hills, is best known for their massive "murals" defending free speech, identifiable by the close-up abstraction of Lady Liberty's face. The posters, which at one time could be seen flanking skyscrapers across the city, were deemed illegal by the city council in a fiery standoff in which councilman Eric Garcetti authorized arrest warrants for the building owners who installed the posters.

But in an interesting turn of events, SkyTag has offered to pay the remaining $12.5m required to secure the land above the Hollywood sign named Cahuenga Peak from the Chicago developer who plans to build multimillion dollar homes there. The company, desperate to secure the future of its most profitable business segment, is well aware of the impending deadline set for the Cahuenga Peak buyout funds to materialize. Several interest groups and private citizens have publicized the cause and raised roughly $9.5m. CBS Corp., NBC Universal, the Walt Disney Company, Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, and Twentieth Century Fox, as well as Hollywood heavyweights Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, number among the donors to the cause. But Fox River Financial has given the Trust for Public Land until April 14 to secure the full $22m purchase.

Attractive proposal, right? Wrong. The city council is not biting. "We're not going to trade off beautification in one place for visual decay in another," said Hollywood area councilman Eric Garcetti. The problem with that argument is that supergraphics are temporary, and there legality can be debated indefinitely; but once the Cahuenga developer builds those houses, the Hollywood sign vista will be marred forever. SkyTag's plea comes soon after a federal appelate judge ruled in December that the city's ban on so-called supergraphics was unconstitutional. Twenty of the signs remain. Ironically, the iconic and jealously guarded Hollywood sign was itself a 200x50 ft advertisement when it was installed in 1923 to promote a housing development.

Source: LA Times

LA Times: Hollywood W Hotel "ungainly"

The 15-story, $600m W Hollywood Hotel and Residences opened this morning after 10 long years of planning and construction. The development, which sits atop the Hollywood/Vine Metro Red Line station, boasts 305 hotel rooms, 143 residences, and 375 rental units, 78 of which are designated low-income. The mess of buildings, billboards, and public space occupies an L-shaped site with the historic 1924 Taft Building at its corner. LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne calls it "equal parts Chateau Marmont, LA Live, and Pershing Square," going on to say that it aptly symbolizes an LA that is "groping toward a denser, more vertical and more public future while still reluctant to abandon its love affair with the car and the glossier, more exclusive corners of celebrity culture."

The W Hotel is the largest mixed-use development to open in Hollywood since the Hollywood/Highland TOD in 2001. But the W project is higher market, more aspirational, and further from Hollywood's epicenter. Because of this, the W project faces more challenges than its neighbor to the west. Back in April of last year, we reported that the new W hotel would attempt to steal back the traditional press junket from the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. It has made an admirable attempt at this lofty goal, with 20 large suites specially suited to accommodate hair and make-up crews and heavy-duty electrical demands. But the W must also cater to a high-end residential market that doesn't want that glitzy Hollywood exposure. Still more divergent are the needs of the low-income renters and Metro passengers - a group that seems likely to be ignored by an upscale hotel management.

The intractable scale and awkward amalgamation of uses and users is less the result of poor planning than it is of a pioneering compromise between a multitude of diverse stakeholders. Nothing like this has ever been seen before in Los Angeles. As Hawthorne suggests, it may be too much to ask that low-income subway commuters mingle with the glamorous Hollywood elite. The complex also suffers from chronic design schizophrenia; a whopping five architecture offices (HKS, Designstudio, Architropolis, Daly Genik, Rios Clementi Hale) produced designs for different aspects of the project, with almost no regard for the intentions of the others. The flashing hotel lobby poses as much of a contrast to the stark rooftop pool as the subway station does to the valet station. Whether the W Hotel and Residences proves to be that much-fantasized catalyst of urban activity and merger of LA's notoriously divergent classes will be its chief test over time.

Rooms sell for between $259 and $1000/night and residences are 30% sold.

Council to vote on lifting Hollywood height limits

A controversial mixed-use project slated for the corner of Sunset Blvd and Gower St is asking for an exemption from the area's 45 ft height limit. The project's developers, AREA Property Partners, have plans for a 28-story residential tower and a 17-story office tower on the site of the old CBS studios. Having already received approval from the city planning commission, the project expects to get the greenlight from city council, including council president Eric Garcetti, who happens to represents the area in question.

But the permitting of this project has consequences beyond just an isolated zoning exemption - it will change the height limits for the entire surrounding neighborhood - a historically low-lying area on Hollywood's fringes. And this is what has sparked some very vocal opposition to the tower. Local residents are mainly concerned about large buildings casting shadows over their homes and yards, but many are worried about the potential Manhattanization of a once-laidback part of town. Robert Silverstein, a local land use lawyer often involved with historic preservation said the city was "willingly [permitting] the destruction of its own past." Zoning, he says, should concentrate development in certain areas while leaving others small-scale.

And what does the developer have to say to that? AREA associate Brian Earle says it is part of the "city's desire to have more density...instead of going out we are going up." While it may sound like a developer jumping on the trendy 'denser is better' bandwagon, he has a point. Sunset and Gower is in an underdeveloped stretch of land just outside the confine's of boomy central Hollywood. If a developer thinks he can make something better out of a stretch of low-density strip malls and dingbat apartments, all the power to him. Besides, it takes a lot more to pencil a project than it used to. Hollywood has arguably become the most dense, walkable neighborhood outside of Downtown. That some locals are still enamored by the drugged-up, run-down Hollywood of old remains a mystery.