Grand Avenue JPA Meeting Offers Little Insight Into Timetable
Eric Richardson
[Flickr]
The Civic Center Park, stretching down from the Music Center to City Hall, is to be redesigned as part of the Grand Avenue Project.
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — After a closed session meeting that lasted roughly forty-five minutes, County Supervisor Gloria Molina offered a quote many might see as a summation of the Grand Avenue Project's current status.
"I can report that there was no reportable item," she told those in attendance.
While construction documents and behind the scenes work continues to move forward, most attention on the project has focused on its slipping date for beginning construction. If the project has not broken ground by February 15, 2009, developer Related owes the Joint Powers Authority $250,000 for each month of delay.
While no detail was given on the closed session discussions, indications are that the developer may be trying to renegotiate some of the terms of the lease on the Grand Avenue parcels. The Grand Avenue Authority today gave the committee supervising the project authority to negotiate amendments based on instructions given in the closed meeting. In open session, several minor dates on the performance schedule were pushed back.
Related Companies President Bill Witte said that the firm is currently focused on planning for the Civic Center Park. "We're all ready to move to the next step," he said. He reported that most schematic design has been finalized, and that a draft business plan for the park is complete.
The next meeting of the Grand Avenue Authority will be on March 23.
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Juanito on December 06, 2009, at 09:04PM – #1
The newest edition of the Downtown News has a vague description of modifications said to be in the works for The Grand.
So I'm commenting here, rather than there, because Sue would surely not put my thoughts out there for everyone to see.
It's easy folks. Forty plus stories of highrise steel construction is not going to pencil out for any type of residential use. Not now and not anytime soon if we consider the percentage of home mortgages which will be under water come the spring of 2011. We ain't seen nothin' yet. As well, the location is too distant from the Convention Center. How can a new hotel at the edge of the Civic Center compete with what's happening in and around L.A. Live? The only possible way is for the developer and the architect to conceive of something which they haven't. Frank could do what is needed, I'm sure; but would the developer go there? Write it all off and start over? Doubtfull. One doubts whether the out of town firm has the dedication - both to the site and to Los Angeles. One wonders, say, if Eli were to team up with Rob Maguire, acquire the development rights from the current developer and produce a new All-Stars type scenario, a scenario that would attract the undivided attention of lenders.
What sort of program could they cook up? THAT could be breathtaking, more astounding than what Rob and compatriots came up with in 1980.
They could include office towers as well. Yes, you laugh and guffaw. But here is why Sue won't put up what I have to say: it is known in structural engineering circles that we have a big problem with certain existing high rise steel-frame buildings hereabouts and all over town, buildings constructed in a certain manner beginning in the late 1970s and on up into the 1990s. This problem exhibited itself in the Northridge Earthquake and the real estate industry immediately came down upon the heads of local elected officials and the problem remains and remains as stark now as it was in January of 1994. The welded joints are simply too brittle. If lease holders located within those certain buildings had any idea! I mean really, would lease holders in New York's World Trade Center have stayed put if they'd had any idea of facts which were being blithely ignored during the spring and summer of 2001 in the Bush White House? Well, if they perchance had half of an idea of what was transpiring and decided to stay put anyway, well, we'd just have had to call it The Crawford Syndrome, and I'm not alluding to the late actress.
No. I don't suggest that Osama is about to attack Downtown L.A., although that was included as part of his overall plan nine years back.
What I do suggest is what could happen during sustained seismic shaking from an 8.0 earthquake. Given today's economic and real estate climate you have to wonder why the town's highrise developers haven't gotten more - shall we say - imaginative - and begun to scare the stinking compost out of every tenant in all of those structures built in the time period mentioned above.
So how about it Sue? How about a cover story? Wasn't it Dickie Riordan who once said that your'e the only person Downtown with balls of iron? Well prove it!
Victor Amador on January 22, 2010, at 11:21AM – #2
The Grand Ave project needs an organic solution, I've just completed a project that address that very subject. After recieving media coverage(KTVU ch. 2 news & the Contra Costa times), the owners have opened it up to the public. I would like to invite you to visit. This landscape masterpiece can be seen at SOFTCONCRETE.com I hope to be involved with the grand ave project, you decide, thanks, Victor Amador (510)395-3032. E-mail: softconcrete@gmail.com