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Posted Sep 22, 2017, 4:38 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 6,453
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the northern side of broadway....& the civic ctr in general.....will feel like it's finally where it should have always been when the apt tower at 4th & broadway is joined by the apt bldg at 4th & Hill. I hope that other tower breaks ground sooner rather than later......no thanks to the opposition from the property owner on broadway. 4th & Hill....with the ptomaine pit known as taco house #1....currently hurts the area around angel's flight & the grand central mkt.
Quote:
In Los Angeles, Hotel Hipness Makes a Grand Return
By RACHEL SYME SEPT. 20, 2017
Los Angeles often has a short memory when it comes to preserving historical sites, but there is a persistent sense of romance that swirls around its hotels, even those that no longer exist. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that Los Angeles began as a transient industry town — actors, writers and filmmakers would pass through and do long stints at hotels while on seasonal studio contracts. Those temporary lodgings often became roiling social clubs, and the Garden of Allah was a prime example.
While many of the classic hotel boîtes of Hollywood from the Garden’s era have remained intact — the Hollywood Roosevelt, the Chateau Marmont, the Beverly Hills Hotel — they have calcified over time, becoming ivy-covered institutions where industry types meet to do deals over $34 steak frites and celebrities hide away in dark corners.
But elements of the once-lost glittering age are re-emerging, thanks to a new breed of hotels, complete with public pools, pillowed banquettes, outdoor movie nights and gaggles of fashionable locals who have turned these transitory spaces into permanent hot spots. (The newfound ease of transit — and therefore imbibing — offered by ride-share apps has helped.)
Here are three that I visited during a whirlwind trip in late spring — when the weather is always 75 degrees and the air smells of night-blooming jasmine, carnitas and salt — and what they offer both stalwart locals and itinerant West Coast explorers.
The Line, in Koreatown in Los Angeles, features a spacious lobby, restaurant and pool deck. Credit Trevor Tondro for The New York Times
Rising above busy Wilshire Boulevard, the Line feels like a midcentury oasis. Opened in up-and-coming Koreatown in 2014 by the Sydell Group, who run the NoMad hotel in New York and the Ned in London, the Line has since attracted a steady stream of locals, who drink cold brew and eat sticky pastries in the spacious lobby, which takes up half a city block.
The day I visited, the restaurant was crowded with dewy young people who had stopped in for a working lunch, scheming future plans over $19 Wagyu beef burgers and avocado toast topped with cured salmon and whole chiles. By night, the pool deck becomes a nightclub, often playing host to D.J. sets — like the Float Fridays party, which converts the swimming area into a dance floor from 6 to 11 p.m. “The romantic idea for the Line, going back to its initial creation is it would be a gathering place for the community,” said Andrew Zobler, chief executive officer at Sydell. “Now, at night, we get a large contingency from the neighborhood.”
Mr. Zobler says he has already seen the communal culture of the Line start to replicate at his new hotel, The Freehand, which opened this summer inside the historical Commercial Exchange building in Downtown Los Angeles (the roof deck bar, the Broken Shaker, opened to the public in September). “The beauty of a hotel lobby is there is both an air of a private space and a public space,” he said. “If you are at a restaurant or bar, people have an expectation of privacy, but at a hotel, some of that comes down.”
Credit Trevor Tondro for The New York Times
Leading the Downtown hotel renaissance — which now includes the renovated Figueroa and an upcoming outpost of New York’s NoMad — was the Ace, which popped up inside the Spanish Gothic United Artists building on South Broadway in 2014. The building, which was once a clubhouse for silent film stars, is very narrow — a creative challenge for the developers in situating the lobby. There was barely room downstairs for a restaurant, so the team made a bold choice: They made the rooftop into the nerve center of the hotel.
“We thought, we have such an iconic lobby experience in New York,” said Kelly Sawdon, an Ace executive vice-president. “And so we asked ourselves, what makes sense in L.A., where do real people want to be here?” The idea, she said, was to harness the city’s generally balmy weather and direct foot traffic straight up the roof by opening a public elevator on street level. “It’s not for guests only; there are no restrictions to coming up and taking in the view. We wanted people who live and work Downtown to feel like they have ownership over this space.”
Their strategy worked: the Ace rooftop is packed from breakfast to the wee hours. In the afternoon, locals bring their dogs up the elevator to pant near the small paddling pool (the day I was there, I saw two pitbulls and a terrier mix), and the bar serves oysters and $10 slices of funfetti birthday cake all day. After sunset, the cake is still available, but the focus shifts to Mary Bartlett’s cocktail program, which always features a frozen drink ($12; a slushy Paloma, for example) and quirky specials like Count Chocula-flavored Jell-O shots.
On the roof of the Ace, I encountered longtime friends Lindsay Rogers, 29, who works at the hip Bolt Barbers on Spring Street (“it’s a whole scene there,” she said) and Christopher Smith, 27, a choreographer and creative director who works with the pop star Justine Skye. They both live Downtown, which they say reminds them most of their native New York habitat. “The hotels here have become like Manhattan,” Mr. Smith said. “We come here so often that we know all the bouncers and bartenders by their first names.”
“Los Angeles used to be a backyard culture,” Mr. Smith said. “But now, with all the new hotel roofs, you can sit outside and still feel like you’ve had a big night.”
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