We Have a Name, You Know

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Update (9pm): So a different article up tonight, about the Regional connector, quotes me and links to blogdowntown. With an actual link. I guess you win some, you lose some.

The Times today pushed a late afternoon story on Downtown, titling it "L.A.'s upscale downtown delayed." The piece talks about how the uncertainty in the market is leading to groundbreaking delays.

More than a third of the approximately 110 residential projects proposed for downtown -- including the 50-story Zen tower on Third and Hill streets, the Mill Street Lofts in the industrial district, the multitower Metropolis off the 110 Freeway and the conversion of the former Herald Examiner building -- have been delayed or put on hold during the rocky real estate market.

Yet downtown boosters and urban planners are focusing most of their angst on two mega-projects: the Frank Gehry-designed Grand Avenue complex on Bunker Hill and Park Fifth, which would be the tallest residential complex west of Chicago.

Interesting to include Metropolis, which has been "delayed" two or three decades at this point. That's a project that clearly falls into the "I'll believe it when I see it" category.

On the second page of the web version we get this veiled mention of blogdowntown:

Concerns about the health of Grand Avenue were heightened last month when Gehry, speaking at the Music Center, was quoted in a downtown blog as saying he was skeptical of the project's timeline and expected money to be a significant hurdle to its completion. Related officials insist that quote was inaccurate; Gehry did not respond to requests for an interview.

Someday papers will learn that even blogs have names. The quote in question was in this article. Related similarly denied the quote to the Downtown News, but I've never seen them suggest they were actually in attendance to hear it said (or not, as they would have you believe).