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.

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?