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  #1041  
Old Posted Nov 8, 2007, 4:57 PM
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French firm is chosen to design Museum of Motion Pictures

From the L.A. Times-
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedi...ll=cl-calendar

Academy tabs Pritzker-winning Atelier Christian de Portzamparc. Groundbreaking on Hollywood site is scheduled for 2009.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Academy Museum of Motion Pictures moved one step closer to reality with the announcement today that French architecture firm Atelier Christian de Portzamparc will design the project.

The academy's board of governors approved the selection based on the recommendations of an architecture subcommittee whose members include Steven Spielberg, Curtis Hanson, producer Kathleen Kennedy and production designer Jeannine Oppewall.

De Portzamparc, a film aficionado, was the "happy and unanimous" choice. As for now, there are no formal plans designed for the museum campus, which will span eight acres, several buildings and open space areas and will be located next to the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in Hollywood, between Vine Street and Cahuenga Boulevard, and De Longpre and Fountain avenues.

Fundraising for the project begins next year. "It's a big chunk of dough," said Ganis, who declined to reveal actually how big a chunk. "It's an extremely ambitious undertaking."

Groundbreaking is scheduled for 2009; Ganis hopes the ribbon will be cut in 2012. "It's what the academy should be doing -- show the world what the art of film has been, what film is about, what the academy is about and how film has influenced us culturally."

susan.king@latimes.com
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  #1042  
Old Posted Nov 8, 2007, 9:30 PM
ocman ocman is offline
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Originally Posted by Steve2726 View Post
French firm is chosen to design Museum of Motion Pictures

From the L.A. Times-
http://www.calendarlive.com/printedi...ll=cl-calendar

Academy tabs Pritzker-winning Atelier Christian de Portzamparc. Groundbreaking on Hollywood site is scheduled for 2009.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Academy Museum of Motion Pictures moved one step closer to reality with the announcement today that French architecture firm Atelier Christian de Portzamparc will design the project.

The academy's board of governors approved the selection based on the recommendations of an architecture subcommittee whose members include Steven Spielberg, Curtis Hanson, producer Kathleen Kennedy and production designer Jeannine Oppewall.

De Portzamparc, a film aficionado, was the "happy and unanimous" choice. As for now, there are no formal plans designed for the museum campus, which will span eight acres, several buildings and open space areas and will be located next to the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study in Hollywood, between Vine Street and Cahuenga Boulevard, and De Longpre and Fountain avenues.

Fundraising for the project begins next year. "It's a big chunk of dough," said Ganis, who declined to reveal actually how big a chunk. "It's an extremely ambitious undertaking."

Groundbreaking is scheduled for 2009; Ganis hopes the ribbon will be cut in 2012. "It's what the academy should be doing -- show the world what the art of film has been, what film is about, what the academy is about and how film has influenced us culturally."

susan.king@latimes.com
Nice to the see the Academy was bold enough to choose an architect rather than hold a design competition. It'll be interesting to see how much money they can raise and to see just how culturally philanthropic Hollywood really is.

Last edited by ocman; Nov 8, 2007 at 9:51 PM.
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  #1043  
Old Posted Nov 8, 2007, 11:31 PM
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Clarett Group Brings Blvd6200 — Multi-Use, Dense TOD — to Hollywood and Vine



After many succesful high-rise housing projects in New York, the Clarett Group is bringing its expertise to Los Angeles.

The Clarett Group’s Blvd6200 Development has as much potential to impact its surrounding neighborhood as any project currently being developed in the Los Angeles basin. In order to discuss the Clarett Group’s transition to Los Angeles and the development process for Blvd6200, which was welcomed by politicians, planners, and the public, TPR was pleased to speak with Frank Stephan, who manages Clarett Group’s West Coast operations at their Los Angeles office.

The Clarett Group is a relatively new player in the West Coast development field. What brought Clarett to Los Angeles and what project is dominating your attention?

I think there are probably several factors that brought us here. An important one happens to be Blvd6200, which is our Hollywood project. It’s the right size and magnitude to launch a West Coast office and to really have a West Coast presence.

We came in January of 2005, when we closed on a 99-year ground lease with the Nederlander family. We came out here to entitle that project. The Nederlander family and our founders have had a great relationship in the past, and the Nederlanders always believed that Clarett would be best suited to carry out this redevelopment of the adjacent land to the Pantages Theater, so that connection and relationship was obviously critical to structuring a deal and them having faith in their choice of developer.

Another reason was opportunity. We know density and mixed use. We’re well respected and accomplished on the East Coast as a developer and a leader in high-rise development, and we truly believe that our expertise in density has a place in the future growth of Los Angeles.

Elaborate on the attraction to L.A. and the challenges of the L.A. market. What attracted Clarett and induced you to open an office and invest in Southern California?

Having the first project to launch an office is always helpful. The founders of the Clarett Group wanted to have an office in key markets. Today, we have one in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. We’re not the kind of company that necessarily wants to be everywhere, but we want to be in key markets where we think we can find opportunity and contribute something to the overall benefit of the cities themselves.

Our background is high-rise building in Manhattan, where we do it well. We create wonderful projects, from the rental high-rise projects that we started with in 1999 when the company was founded, to the luxury condominium projects that we’ve produced since 2001. All have been great projects with great end results, not only for ourselves but for the communities they’ve been incorporated into.

There has been a lot of talk about the market. We believe that our Hollywood project is really capable of weathering any real estate slowdown, because we’re producing new rental housing product. A softening condo market and a tough home mortgage market really leads to more of a demand for rental housing, as more people may opt to postpone ownership and choose to rent.

The other notable factor with where we’re positioned in the market with the Blvd6200 project is that Hollywood is experiencing a modern-day renaissance. We consider ourselves part of the bigger picture of that Hollywood renaissance, where an emerging, walkable, residential community is being created on the eastern end of Hollywood Boulevard—and a walkable neighborhood in Los Angeles is a true commodity.

What are the project details and ambitions of Blvd6200?

Blvd6200 is a more than $400 million, privately funded investment. It’s approximately 1.2 million square feet. If you include the parking, it’s over 2 million square feet. We’re scheduled to begin construction in the first quarter of 2008. As far as location, it’s located on an approximately seven-acre parcel, directly across the street from the Pantages Theater. We’re east of Argyle, west of El Centro, south of Carlos, and north of Selma. Our project is bisected by Hollywood Boulevard, so we refer to it as a north block and a south block.

On that north block and south block, we have more than 1,000 residential rental units, of which ten percent are onsite affordable housing without any public subsidy.

We have approximately 175,000 square feet of ground-floor, street-front retail and restaurants. We have approximately 40,000 square feet of live/work units with ground floor entrances. Through our outreach, we see these providing possible future homes to post-production and smaller entertainment companies. We’ve incorporated approximately 12,000 square feet of public open plazas on the Boulevard, and of course, with the philosophy of the city of Los Angeles, we’re really thrilled to be creating a project that is going to feature sustainable design and have a green building program.



Talk a little bit about the team of contractors, architects, planners, etc. that you’ve assembled to bring to life this new model of high-density housing for Los Angeles.

We have a fantastic team, and everyone truly plays their part, from our land use attorney, Jeffer Mangels Butler & Marmaro, LLP, to our community relations consultation, Handelman Consulting. Some of them deal with design aspects of the project; some of them deal with political aspects of the project and outreach to communities. As you’re well aware, in the approval and entitlement process in Los Angeles, every factor is equally important. We have an architect out of Santa Monica, Van Tilburg, Banvard and Soderbergh. We have a structural engineer, Englekirk Partners. We have Donald F. Dickerson Associates as our MEPS engineers. We have a number of other consultants, from LEED consultants to vertical transportation consultants. It takes a group of many to put together a project like this, but we’re very cognizant of the need to create a team that is capable of putting egos aside and really working toward the common good of a project.

Your architect is well known for dense development, and you’ve got a very dense, six story development project here. What were the challenges, trade-offs, and the ultimate result of the development process?

When you put together a project like this, you have to listen to what the people have to say. We were out in the community early and often. We think that communities are smart enough to recognize that not all density is bad, and we were able to garner unanimous community support from the Hollywood community for this particular project. We reached out to the city family early and often, and the city recognizes that density is the solution to a future housing crisis. It’s notable that this project is directly across from the Metro stop, so it’s density where you want density.

We have incorporated things that come from many different groups in the Hollywood community, such as public open spaces, live/work units, affordable housing, and a green building program. It’s not one group that contributed these ideas; it’s really our job as a developer to listen to everybody’s input and then to weigh the pros and cons to create a project that is beneficial to the community, always trying to balance what’s feasible.

Talk a little about the decisions that were made at the city level that were most helpful to the project. If you were going through the process again, what changes in processes ought to be put in place to encourage more high-rise, dense, affordable housing projects?

I’ll start by saying that the approval process in L.A. was new for us. The approval process is dramatically different from New York, where approved, by-right zoning exists, and you anticipate starting a project nine to ten months after you acquire the land. It took Blvd6200 about two years to entitle. We had never gone through an approval process in L.A. before. This is the first project. I think it’s fair to say that we learned a lot, and I feel that we’re as qualified as anyone to do it again.

I think a lot of it has to do with the community outreach. It’s balancing what the city family and the community want. It’s trying to incorporate a combination of community benefits out of a project that represents smart growth.

We always try to look at the checklist: what are we giving back to the community? It’s green; it’s sustainable; it has affordable housing; it has vast, public open spaces where dining and gathering create a sense of place on the Boulevard; it brings residential to the Boulevard that hasn’t existed in such a long time. When you create a smart growth project, you’re creating a mass of people in a mixed-use environment that creates an inherent sense of security on the Boulevard. The pedestrian activity is most desirable.

As far as the approval process, timing, and what we went through, I went to the mayoral housing summit yesterday, and almost all the speakers and panelists talked about how this process needs to be improved, from the mayor to Council President Garcetti to Gail Goldberg. I think it’s encouraging that leaders like them are committed to improving this system. Because I think, in the end, speed is a competitive weapon, and the timeframe influences the overall cost of the product. I think L.A. should really want to be as desirable a development city as any other.

What was Council President Garcetti’s influence and impact on this project?

One of the first things we did when we closed the ground lease was we booked a flight, flew out here, and sat down with Eric Garcetti and his staff. It is amazing to see some of the project attributes that people point to as smart growth or give us recognition for including in a project, such as public plazas and affordable housing, live/work units, and green building. It’s amazing to see those items incorporated into a project now, because they were the same items we talked about in the first meeting.

Council President Garcetti has been extremely helpful; he was supportive at the City Council approval. We were thrilled when he stood up there and told the rest of the council members that this project is as important to the city of Los Angeles as Grand Avenue and L.A. Live.

If TPR were to come back again in a year for a second interview with Clarett, what would be the likely subjects of our interview?

We’ll be talking about a couple of our new projects, which we hope to be able to announce before the end of the year. I’d probably be giving you an updated status report on how excavation is going on Blvd6200. We have to move a lot of dirt.
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  #1044  
Old Posted Nov 8, 2007, 11:47 PM
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I’ll start by saying that the approval process in L.A. was new for us. The approval process is dramatically different from New York, where approved, by-right zoning exists, and you anticipate starting a project nine to ten months after you acquire the land. It took Blvd6200 about two years to entitle.
Incredibly sad.
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  #1045  
Old Posted Nov 9, 2007, 7:31 AM
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DowntownCharlieBrown DowntownCharlieBrown is offline
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Santa Clause is coming to town!

I had read that it was canceled, but apparently it’s back.

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Thursday, November 08, 2007

lacityorgcd13.blogspot.com

Bob Barker, come on down! You're the next Grand Marshal of Hollywood's Santa Parade!
Hollywood Boulevard has long symbolized a place where people come to make their dreams come true. In just a few weeks, thousands of kids will come to Hollywood Boulevard in hopes of asking Santa to make their holiday dreams come true.

When I heard that for the first time in 75 years the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce would not produce a holiday parade, I knew we couldn't let this tradition die. Today I was happy to announce that not only is the parade going to continue this year, but we have a terrific Grand Marshal in legendary television personality Bob Barker.

The parade will be on Sunday, November 25, beginning at 5 p.m. The route begins at Hollywood and Highland, making it convenient to take the Metro Red Line to the parade.
For more information, visit the Hollywood's Santa Parade site.

Hope to see you there!
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  #1046  
Old Posted Nov 9, 2007, 7:31 PM
Echo Park Echo Park is offline
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Bob Barker? *yawn*

The reason they wanted to scrap the parade was its aging and loss of appeal. It had this 50s sort of hokey pagaentry to it. They really need to rebrand that parade, sex it up a bit, take some cues from WeHo and make it a little more festive. Screw the kids.
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  #1047  
Old Posted Nov 9, 2007, 11:18 PM
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Bob Barker? *yawn*

The reason they wanted to scrap the parade was its aging and loss of appeal. It had this 50s sort of hokey pagaentry to it. They really need to rebrand that parade, sex it up a bit, take some cues from WeHo and make it a little more festive. Screw the kids.

LOLLOL I see rio coming into play
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  #1048  
Old Posted Nov 9, 2007, 11:20 PM
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DowntownCharlieBrown DowntownCharlieBrown is offline
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Bob Barker? *yawn*

The reason they wanted to scrap the parade was its aging and loss of appeal. It had this 50s sort of hokey pagaentry to it. They really need to rebrand that parade, sex it up a bit, take some cues from WeHo and make it a little more festive. Screw the kids.

Yes, put some half naked people dancing on floats to the latest club sounds and I’ll watch.

I went one year, and yeah, it was pretty lame. Nothing against her, but the biggest star that year was Tori Spelling. Sure, it had its share of marching bands and horses, as all parades do, but I remember the floats were pretty shabby. A lot of cars with ‘movie stars’ went by, and we had to ask, “who the fuck was that”. This is definitely a case where they can look to other examples and learn. The Macy’s parade in New York is very polished, full of celebrities, and heavily paid for by advertisers. This is one area advertising could really give a boost to this event.
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  #1049  
Old Posted Nov 10, 2007, 1:00 AM
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Yes, put some half naked people dancing on floats to the latest club sounds and I’ll watch.

I went one year, and yeah, it was pretty lame. Nothing against her, but the biggest star that year was Tori Spelling. Sure, it had its share of marching bands and horses, as all parades do, but I remember the floats were pretty shabby. A lot of cars with ‘movie stars’ went by, and we had to ask, “who the fuck was that”. This is definitely a case where they can look to other examples and learn. The Macy’s parade in New York is very polished, full of celebrities, and heavily paid for by advertisers. This is one area advertising could really give a boost to this event.
For as long as I can remember, the Hollywood X-mas Parade was always lame. As a youngster, they would have people like Soleil Moon-Frye and Kristy MacNichol riding in convertibles.

The Macy's Parade is just as lame, I've always thought. Maybe because I'm not into Broadway shows? But whenever I do channel surf on Thanksgiving and stumble upon the Macy's Parade, it's always some overly made-up guy and chick lip-synching to some god-awful song from a trendy-for-the-moment Broadway show. E.g., "500 68 million 400 39 thousand seconds!" from "Rent" or whatever.
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  #1050  
Old Posted Nov 10, 2007, 10:39 AM
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For me, the appeal of the macy's parade was in both the baloons in themselves, and the scale of manhattan as backdrop. It's probably the only parade that showcases a city in a flattering way. any Los Angeles parade is just lame. even the tournament of roses with its underwhelming suburban banality.
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  #1051  
Old Posted Nov 10, 2007, 7:04 PM
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Tournament of Roses is purposely quaint. That's the appeal of it.
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  #1052  
Old Posted Nov 10, 2007, 7:15 PM
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ed, have you been to the rose parade yet? It's actually a lot cooler in person when it comes down colorado. The fact that the TV only shows the part when they pass by some suburban library totally sucks because its much more festive down the street.
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  #1053  
Old Posted Nov 11, 2007, 5:39 AM
edluva edluva is offline
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pola - i helped sprinkle produce and elmer's glue on some of the floats way back in high school, and i've attended a few parades. they were fun to watch in person as a kid because as a kid i wasn't that hard to impress. that suburban library you're speaking of is probably the norton simon, btw...

ocman, i thought the appeal of it was that it catered to the sizeable >65 and middle-america bandos demographic. okay i'll stop being facetious.
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  #1054  
Old Posted Nov 11, 2007, 10:31 AM
Guatemalanking Guatemalanking is offline
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pola - i helped sprinkle produce and elmer's glue on some of the floats way back in high school, and i've attended a few parades. they were fun to watch in person as a kid because as a kid i wasn't that hard to impress. that suburban library you're speaking of is probably the norton simon, btw...

ocman, i thought the appeal of it was that it catered to the sizeable >65 and middle-america bandos demographic. okay i'll stop being facetious.
I think the route it passes its mostly urban except for the Norton Simon Museum area which is what they focus on tv and yes your right it is to cater to those millions and let them imagine its happy land.
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  #1055  
Old Posted Nov 11, 2007, 4:32 PM
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I think the route it passes its mostly urban except for the Norton Simon Museum area which is what they focus on tv and yes your right it is to cater to those millions and let them imagine its happy land.
Well the Norton Simon is right near the beginning of the Rose Parade route, and that location of the TV cameras (the parking lot of the Elks Lodge across the street from Norton Simon) offers a sweeping unobstructed view of the San Gabriel Mountains, whenever they do a wide-shot, of course.

I think from a marketing perspective, the Rose Parade has been way more successful, to the good or detriment of SoCal (depending on one's POV), than the Macy's Parade in NYC. The Rose Parade started in the late 1800s, back when California was considered a remote and exotic location, and Pasadena started out as a resort town frequented by wealthy East Coast and Midwest residents (there's still a lot of old money in Pasadena/San Marino). The Rose Parade was a way of showing the rest of the US (and for the wealthy tourists staying in Pasadena to gloat to their friends back home) that in SoCal, it was possible to enjoy sunshine, oranges, and even full-bloomed flowers in the middle of winter. First through postcards, then through newsreels, then through TV, people saw images of flowers and sunshine on New Year's Day when most of the traditional population centers of the US were staying home looking at the snow outside. I've read a number of accounts of how the Rose Parade inspired people to move to California... which is why I loved it a few years ago when it rained hard on the Rose Parade, I thought 'Good! Maybe fewer people will move here this year!' Because believe it or not, the LA region is still growing... and I think there are way too many people here as it is.

I doubt that the Macy's Parade has inspired droves of people to move to NYC.
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  #1056  
Old Posted Nov 11, 2007, 8:55 PM
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^ Well, not only that, but if you're talking about the winter climate for NYC, once natural gas peaks and production begins to decline, the entire Northeastern part of the United States will be incredibly miserable to live in. Oil and natural gas that heats the homes in the Northeast will not last forever and there is hardly the alternative infrastructure in place to replace fossil fuels at this time. NYC will be even less attractive and inhospitable, unfortunately, since I actually love NYC.
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  #1057  
Old Posted Nov 11, 2007, 10:35 PM
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I doubt that the Macy's Parade has inspired droves of people to move to NYC.

true, but it's harder to get a city of 7 million to continue growing...NY was alread that large when macy's began.

LAB - you really can't stop pushing that peak oil agenda of yours huh? what happened to your "west central" propaganda
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  #1058  
Old Posted Nov 12, 2007, 8:05 AM
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^ I grew up
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  #1059  
Old Posted Nov 12, 2007, 8:37 AM
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Even when I was a kid, I could never sit through more than a few minutes of the macy's parade, certainly the coverage on NBC. Who watches that show anyway?! I imagine mainly bored kiddies & desperate housewives.

It's like a one hour event stretched over 3 long hrs, with endless bad lip syncing routines & a thousand high school bands doing their marching routines, over & over again, stuck in front of the camera. The parade stops & starts, stops & starts, stops & starts. And many of that event's exact same units, inc balloons &, for example, a turkey float, are brought out yr after yr, so it's like deja vu all over again. I find myself yelling "ENOUGH ALREADY!", & switching the channel.
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  #1060  
Old Posted Nov 13, 2007, 1:20 AM
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^ I grew up
I know you were being sarcastic, but I actually love your idea of west central. Centralizing LA is a good thing. It is FAR more central than people want to believe.

I am using that concept for my webpage on the subway to the sea. I call it the central area for lack of a creative name.
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