Posted Oct 23, 2014, 12:03 AM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
Posts: 51,900
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/us...dens.html?_r=0
Rule Change Lets Los Angeles Dream of Spires
LARGE
LARGE
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
OCT. 21, 2014
Quote:
The downtown streets of Los Angeles these days are teeming with restaurants, music clubs, boutique hotels, sparkling new buildings and people, lots of people — swirling evidence of a transformation in a part of town that has always seemed something of an urban afterthought.
Just don’t look up. No matter how interesting city life has become out on the streets, the Los Angeles skyline remains an uninspiring procession of flattop buildings, a consequence of a 40-year-old Fire Department regulation that every skyscraper be topped by a helipad to allow for emergency rescues.
That is about to change. The Fire Department agreed last month to drop the regulation, which it had long contended was critical for public safety. In doing so, it is deferring to architects, elected officials and downtown champions who view the rule, known as Regulation 10, as superfluous at a time of advancement in fire safety technology and — worse — as a self-imposed prescription for architectural mediocrity in downtown Los Angeles at the very time that it is trying to strut its stuff for the nation.
...The rule change, which took effect immediately, has architects and city leaders dreaming of buildings featuring graceful spires evocative of the Chrysler Building in New York, glistening in the night sky or topped with sky-high parks and gardens. Los Angeles is the only major city in the United States that had a regulation for flattop buildings. “One more stupid rule in Los Angeles,” said Eric Garcetti, the mayor, in announcing its repeal.
“The helipad regulation has hindered L.A. from having an iconic, memorable skyline in a city that desperately needs a stronger urban identity,” said Brigham Yen, a downtown realtor who writes a blog, DTLA Rising. “Downtown L.A. now has the opportunity to design visually stunning high-rises with spires that will strengthen its position as an urban center.”
Brenda A. Levin, a Los Angeles architect who has overseen renovations of some of the city’s most historic buildings, said that the restrictions had served only to encourage “mundane architecture.” “The question will be whether now that the restriction is lifted, will the result be a more elegant high rise or just another spire reaching to make a building the tallest in the West?” she wrote in an email.
The catalyst for the change is the 73-story Wilshire Grand Center, a skyscraper now rising in downtown that will indeed, once completed, be the tallest building in the West, at 1,100 feet. Its architects asked the city two years ago for permission to top it with a spire — a conventional request in any other place — and that led to the creation of a commission to study the policy.
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