Crandello (@Crandello) on January 27, 2013, at 12:22PM – #1

Hotel and college facilities THAT far east? This is really pushing it. Whatever architectural solutions arrived at would need to be fantastically magnetic or else they'd be pouring money into a writeoff and a lot of wasted energy.

The idea would be far more interesting if were being pursued in the precincts of where Broadway, Spring and Main all collide - near the old Herald Examiner Building, the UA Theater/boutique hotel development and the California Mart (or whatever the latter is now known as). The urban design potential in this zone is significant.

Of course the costs are less way out east, so to speak. But will the program and the architecture breed success? On the other hand, could the eastward expansion be brought to a grinding halt? The district exploded outward from the southern end of Los Angeles Street in the winter of 1979/80 and the area has always been about one thing: shopping.

Consider the history of the terrain where the project has been set: food. Every time that I've strolled through the fashion district I've felt as if I were in a Mid-Eastern bazar. I once strolled the area after work in summer 1977 and the area was completely deserted; now it is the opposite. I'd feel much more encouraged if the developer was proposing a place for retailing of all kinds of food at the center of the multi-culti constellation that is L.A.

Such could become a place about which the regional populace would come to perceive in like manner to the way they've long beheld the fashion district. Make it exotic. You've simply got to dazzle the masses! Perhaps incorporate the flower market as well. Hint: the greenhouses which served the city's first flower market at Fourth and Los Angeles Streets were eventually dismantled and rebuilt at the southeast corner of Ninth and San Pedro Streets. That was over a century ago and unfortunate it has been that redevelopment funds were used to construct something that is so unimaginative, the complex that is the existing flower market. Yup: all of the heart and soul of a wet mop.