Eric Richardson []

Eli Broad stands next to the site of his museum on the day it was approved by the Grand Avenue Authority in August.

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — In August, Downtown beat out proposed sites in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills to land the Broad Art Foundation’s contemporary art museum. Thursday, community leaders get to see just what that museum will look like as the first architectural renderings for the structure designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro are released at a press conference inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

In addition to the unveiling of the design of the museum, a timetable of planning and construction will be announced. Attendees will also be introduced to the museum’s governing board.

The museum will be located directly south of the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Grand Avenue and across the street from the Colburn music school and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), creating what philanthropist Eli Broad has called a cultural “critical mass.” He and his wife Edythe founded the in 1984 and have long wanted to create a museum for its collection.

The museum, which will house the world headquarters of the Broad Art Foundation as well as its important collections of postwar and contemporary art, is estimated to cost over $100 million and is planned to feature 35,000 square feet of exhibition space. That will be enough to display approximately 300 of the collection’s 2,000 works at any one time.

The Broads and architect Liz Diller will be joined by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Councilwoman Jan Perry, Community Redevelopment Agency Chairman Kenneth H. Fearn and 200 community leaders at the announcement.

This summer, Eli expressed the hope that the museum project could kickstart the $3 billion Grand Avenue Project, the first phase of which remains stalled in search of construction financing. Many of the same dignitaries were in the same Disney Concert Hall space for the unveiling of that project’s design in April of 2006.

While a more concrete timeline will be presented on Thursday, the museum is currently set for completion by late 2012.