[citywatch]

This article repeats what most ppl already know about the old Hollywood Broadway bldg, except the part about parking space being inserted on the 2nd & 3rd floors. I wonder how that will affect the look of the bldg's exterior & its array of regular glass windows that once served office or store space?:

LA Times, Sept 13, 2005

Broadway Building Gets Loft Conversion

By Roger Vincent, Times Staff Writer

The historic Broadway department store building at one of the most famous intersections in Los Angeles is being converted to 96 luxury condominiums. Kor Group has started renovation of the 10-story building at the southwest corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street that opened in 1927 as a Dyas department store and later became a Broadway branch. It has been vacant for years.

Kor's development is part of a burst of residential development in Hollywood, spurred by growing demand for urban living in some of Los Angeles' older communities. There are roughly 2,560 apartments and condos being planned or under construction in the neighborhood, according to the Hollywood Entertainment District, a property owners' group.

Units ranging from about 930 square feet to 2,000 square feet will be built at the Broadway building as open lofts with finished kitchens and bathrooms, said Tyson Sayles, senior vice president at Los Angeles-based Kor. Units are expected to be priced from $400,000 to $2 million when completed in mid-2006. Shops and a restaurant will occupy the ground floor and parking will be provided on the sub-basement, second and third floors, Sayles said. On top will be a roof garden with pool, cabanas, an exercise room and a spa.

The original building was a 10-story Classical Revival style concrete and steel structure, project architect Wade Killefer said. Then, in 1939, an eight-story Streamline Moderne building, designed by Donald Parkinson, was built to the west of the original building — "interestingly, with no effort to match the original building," Killefer said. The conversion will restore the facade of the addition and the exposed brick of the original 1920s structure. It also will add two stories to the 1939 addition, said Killefer, whose firm also designed Kor's renovations of the Eastern Columbia and Pegasus buildings downtown.

Elsewhere in east Hollywood, Santa Monica-based Palisades Development Group expects to start work next month on 60 loft-style condominiums in the 1929-vintage Equitable office building at the northeast corner of Hollywood and Vine, said Avi Brosh, president of the firm. Other developers plan to build 262 apartments, 96 condominiums and a 300-room W Hotel at the southeast corner by late 2007.

Conversion of a former office building to 90 apartments is slated to begin early next year in the tower at the southeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and Vine. Los Angeles developer CIM Group expects to complete the project in 2007, a spokeswoman said.