Wrapping up the Downtown Living Open House

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The LA Times today has a brief mention of the Downtown Living Open House. I promised a write-up earlier in the weekend and then got busy, so I’ll go ahead and wrap it up for you real quick now. I’ve put my pictures from the event up over on my flickr account (I’ll link to specific pictures in the write-up).

As I mentioned earlier, there were a lot of participating projects that didn't have much to show. I understand that construction presents issues when it comes to letting people inside a building, but the folks at the PE Lofts building did it well and I would have loved to see a little more like that out of the Subway Terminal Building (err... Metro 417). I thought they were going to have a tour when on entering they gave you a hardhat, but it turns out the hardhat was just to enter the fairly construction-free lobby.

1100 Wilshire offered some great views, but not a lot else. They were taking people up to floor 32, which is gutted and blank. Good for looking at the city, but not much when it comes to visualizing condos. A similar project, 801 S. Grand, also had the blank gutted floor but presented the project a lot better through floor plans marked out on the concrete. The views from there were similarly impressive.

I already mentioned my disappointment in the Eastern Columbia building. I know nothing more about that project than I did before this weekend.

The Santa Fe lofts looked good, but I'd been in there before. The new units are a lot more finished and expensive looking than they used to be when my friend first moved in their a couple years ago.

All in all it was a fun event, and it was good to see so many people looking at units Downtown. Next time, though, I'd love to see a few more projects that actually had something to show.