LOS ANGELES | METRO Project Rundown 2.0 (non-downtown)

[brudy]

Originally Posted by AndrewK

West of Mateo... on 7th st. The block of Industrial west of Mateo is the heart of the Arts District (the South Arts District that is).

Yeah, I guess I should say Mill St. There's a ton of stuff on Industrial between mateo and mill, but on 7th it's almost a total wasteland west of there.

[kelbeen]

11.04: 10000 SM

I'm always amazed at how fast these buildings rise, once they start going up. by Eesomest, on Flickr

[blackcat23]

^^^10000 SaMo should start moving a lot faster, now that the crane is in place.

In less skyline changing news, this is a conceptual design for the affordable housing complex in Boyle Heights, mentioned yesterday:

http://buildinglosangeles.blogspot.c...ble-mixed.html

The project is named the Santa Cecilia Apartments, and is being developed by McCormack Baron Salazar. They've previously collaborated with Metro on the MacArthur Park TOD.

It's a four-story building, designed by DE Architects, with 79 affordable one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments above 4,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.



Mariachi Plaza is wonderful public space, though a little rough around the edges. It's nice to see the vacant lots filling in to create a more cohesive neighborhood.

[LAsam]

Originally Posted by kelbeen

11.04: 10000 SM

I'm always amazed at how fast these buildings rise, once they start going up. by Eesomest, on Flickr

Thanks for the update! It will be exciting to see Century City get its first new tower since The Century. I wonder if the construction of this residential tower means that The Century was considered a success from a financial point of view.

[ocman]

Today is a great day for art in Los Angeles for two huge announcements.

LACMA is announcing "the largest gift of art...in it's history". In other words, OF ALL TIME. This is pretty big news if it's more significant than the amazing Lazarof collection given to LACMA back in 2007. And like the Lazarof collection, this new donation is mainly modern art.

It'll include Manet, Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Bonnard, and Picasso. It should be very interesting to see how far it'll take LACMA's modern art collection, considering the Lazaroff collection was considered one of the most transformative donations. Donations of this magnitude happen so rarely nowadays for any museum so LA is very lucky. I think it probably says a lot about the city's rise in importance concerning private art collection, if the donor is local. That makes me really curious to know who the donor could be and how far this collection will catapult LACMA's reputation for modern art.


Also, the Getty finally bought art! Every new painting helps to detract from all that Rococo shit JP Getty collected. The museum just won the bid for the $65 million Manet at Christie's auction today, but at almost twice what it was predicted.

http://blogs.artinfo.com/lacmonfire/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/ar...christies.html

[ocman]

oh, and to tie this in to development, today the county also approved $125 million for the Zumthor LACMA project. The project costs $600 million.

[IMBY]

Originally Posted by edluva

slightly off topic, but for those of you able to vote santa monica, please vote pam oconnor, frank gruber, and mike feinstein for the 3 council seats being contested. they are much better informed and less anti-development than the rest of the candidates (with added caveat to feinstein but there is probably no better third candidate). oconnor and gruber have been staunch bike and transit advocates, not only for santa monica but for the region as a whole, with oconnor heavily involved in regional transit planning, and gruber being as close to a SSP councilmember as you can find. he's written extensively on urbanism and demonstrates the ability to distinguish between good (ped/bike/transit) and bad (auto-oriented) density. something even most "progressive" angelenos fail to appreciate.

feinstein wants to pass height-restriction ordinances and he's still the most moderate of the remainders (that's how backwards we are in samo)

Most news out of Santa Monica is better than looking over the Comics section of the newspaper!

Less anti-development than the rest of the candidates! Let me guess! If someone proposes a 12 story building, as opposed to chopping it down to 7 stories, they'd only chop off 2 stories?

[blackcat23]

More East LA TODs:

http://buildinglosangeles.blogspot.c...pments-in.html

Four new developments planned on Metro-owned land in Boyle Heights. Three properties are near Gold Line Stations at 1st/Boyle and 1st/Soto, another is a few blocks north at Cesar E. Chavez/Soto.

[Flavius Josephus]

Bad news for the Millennium: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...ry.html#page=1 http://gmw.consrv.ca.gov/SHMP/downlo...wood_EZRIM.pdf

Key areas affected: Most of Franklin and Los Feliz Blvds (not exactly a surprise there--those streets feel like they're near a fault); some parts of the north side of Hollywood near Vine. Most of the parcels actually on Hollywood are fine, but the state has the fault roughly following the line of parking lots between Cahuenga and Carlos. I think we can expect all of them to remain parking lots for the foreseeable future, then, since it would be very difficult to build anything much that would allow for the 50 foot setbacks on either side of the fault. The location changed a bit since the previous map, but is still on the Millennium site. Probably possible to do one of the towers as-is, but the other one is probably unbuildable without a significant redesign.

[brudy]

Originally Posted by ocman

Today is a great day for art in Los Angeles for two huge announcements.

Also, the Getty finally bought art! Every new painting helps to detract from all that Rococo shit JP Getty collected. The museum just won the bid for the $65 million Manet at Christie's auction today, but at almost twice what it was predicted.

http://blogs.artinfo.com/lacmonfire/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/ar...christies.html

Couldn't agree more!

[Flavius Josephus]

Originally Posted by ocman

oh, and to tie this in to development, today the county also approved $125 million for the Zumthor LACMA project. The project costs $600 million.

They're actually related - one of the conditions of Jerry Perenchio's gift was that LACMA proceed with its rebuild.

Now, if LACMA could just persuade the Marciano brothers to donate their art and the private museum they've bought... http://la.curbed.com/archives/2014/0...seum_plans.php


On another note, HUD Secretary Castro is coming to town to speak at a real estate conference. I wonder if he'll be announcing any new policy initiatives while he's in town. http://www.heraldonline.com/2014/11/...=/100/773/385/

[edluva]

Originally Posted by IMBY

Less anti-development than the rest of the candidates! Let me guess! If someone proposes a 12 story building, as opposed to chopping it down to 7 stories, they'd only chop off 2 stories?

yes unfortunately that's become the norm for SM politics. this formerly progressive city has become overrun by NIMBYist tenants who control 70% of the electorate.
the result: any candidate who wants a viable way into city government has to cater to the Santa Monica for Renters Rights political party, which holds a virtual monopoly on civic governance. and SMRR's stance is virtually total anti-growth, regardless of quality of said growth.

I'm losing hope in Santa Monica's ability to build on the relative progress it's made over the past decades. as much as i sympathize with renters, santa monica's is a lesson on "regulating on behalf of public interest" gone awry, and it's turned me squarely against self-serving rent control and affordable housing policies across the board.

you simply cannot regulate the poor into a wealthy high-cost region such as the westside. this is especially true in LA, where the ostensible goal is always "reducing congestion by bringing the poor closer to their jobs". this is an unattainable goal, because where a person works, and how a person commutes is subject to a multitude of factors beyond any housing agency's control. but i can tell you that the most direct, guarantee-able result of short-sighted affordable housing and rent control policies is even more out of control housing prices as the cost of subsidizing affordable housing and artificially set below-market rental is passed onto the free-market just like how the cost of accommodating car parking is passed on to consumers.

in los angeles, congestion, auto-centric urban design, NIMBYism, bland urbanism, and housing shortages have the same common fundamental solution: mass transit. nothing else will solve these problems. any talk of how "progress" is being made with our surface-lot and density "problems" lacks substance if transit isn't the root cause of such infill. with los angeles, no transit=no progress.

[StethJeff]

Originally Posted by ocman

oh, and to tie this in to development, today the county also approved $125 million for the Zumthor LACMA project. The project costs $600 million.

There was a good opinion piece in the LAT the other day arguing for the $125M county money. Couldn't agree more. Now with this new collection coming in, I'd hope that it's a lock that we'll see the Zumthor Tar (one of my favorite LA projects) and the collection. Very good news for LA.

[Flavius Josephus]

Originally Posted by edluva

yes unfortunately that's become the norm for SM politics. this formerly progressive city has become overrun by NIMBYist tenants who control 70% of the electorate.
the result: any candidate who wants a viable way into city government has to cater to the Santa Monica for Renters Rights political party, which holds a virtual monopoly on civic governance. and SMRR's stance is virtually total anti-growth, regardless of quality of said growth.

I'm losing hope in Santa Monica's ability to build on the relative progress it's made over the past decades. as much as i sympathize with renters, santa monica's is a lesson on "regulating on behalf of public interest" gone awry, and it's turned me squarely against self-serving rent control and affordable housing policies across the board.

you simply cannot regulate the poor into a wealthy high-cost region such as the westside. this is especially true in LA, where the ostensible goal is always "reducing congestion by bringing the poor closer to their jobs". this is an unattainable goal, because where a person works, and how a person commutes is subject to a multitude of factors beyond any housing agency's control. but i can tell you that the most direct, guarantee-able result of short-sighted affordable housing and rent control policies is even more out of control housing prices as the cost of subsidizing affordable housing and artificially set below-market rental is passed onto the free-market just like how the cost of accommodating car parking is passed on to consumers.

in los angeles, congestion, auto-centric urban design, NIMBYism, bland urbanism, and housing shortages have the same common fundamental solution: mass transit. nothing else will solve these problems. any talk of how "progress" is being made with our surface-lot and density "problems" lacks substance if transit isn't the root cause of such infill. with los angeles, no transit=no progress.

SMRR is now pretty much anti- even affordable housing. They've come pretty close to turning even on their founder, Denny Zane, who currently leads the MoveLA pro-transit lobby. Santa Monica is pretty close to being LA's hukou city - good if you already live there, but if you don't, they'll make it impossible for you to move there.

I think in time, with Expo and eventually more lines, the current closed-doors attitude will diminish somewhat. The question is how much damage they'll do in the meantime. The nutty Residocracy folks have been mumbling about an initiative to require all new development go to a popular vote. If they're ever that explicit about banning new housing, they'll probably get sued for violating state planning and fair housing law, but the situation definitely isn't good.

Now, I think this election was worse than most--with no competitive state or federal races, the key things driving turnout were the Supervisorial race, SD-26, and the airport ballot measures. None of those are really going to fire up the sorts of young voters who are feeling the effects of SM's exclusionary policies.

[IMBY]

I'm guessing any Dade County/Miami developer shares my laughter anytime they read development news out of Santa Monica, or any of the other anti-development beach communities of Southern California!

They go to bed at night, shaking their heads in disbelief!

[Illithid Dude]

Yo, I'm a little out of the L.A. Country political loop. What happened that was so bad in SaMo?

[Flavius Josephus]

Originally Posted by Illithid Dude

Yo, I'm a little out of the L.A. Country political loop. What happened that was so bad in SaMo?

Actually, it wasn't as bad as it could be - Pam O'Connor still got reelected. But they voted down an affordable housing tax. Commentary from SaMo Next here: http://www.santamonicanext.org/2014/...-santa-monica/

[blackcat23]

Santa Monica's politics have devolved into a complete clusterf***; uninformed NIMBYism masquerading under the guise of populism. Not sure how a bunch of self-identified progressives can reconcile those values with their advocacy for exclusionary housing policy. I suppose being surgically attached to your car will do that to you.

http://buildinglosangeles.blogspot.c...ded-to-la.html

As Flavius mentioned in his summary of the bi-weekly City Planning filings, there's a 169-unit/37,000 sq. ft. retail development planned at the northeast corner of La Brea and Willoughby Avenues. 14 units reserved for very-low income families.



Also worth noting that this is the former site of the Mole-Richardson building, which was unexpectedly demolished over the summer, to the chagrin of many preservationists.

[colemonkee]

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!! That building was awesome! And I used to go to the Mole-Richardson store in college to get supplies.

[brudy]

Originally Posted by Flavius Josephus

Actually, it wasn't as bad as it could be - Pam O'Connor still got reelected. But they voted down an affordable housing tax. Commentary from SaMo Next here: http://www.santamonicanext.org/2014/...-santa-monica/

That piece is really sad in so many ways - the hysteria around traffic, fear of the expo line, fear of non-rich people, weird political bedfellows, old crusty get-off-my-wealthy-lawners...