MasterPlanning!: Grand Avenue—An Old, Old Story
by Tony Chavira
“Masterplanning” is a bit of a misnomer for this article because, up until recently, there’s been no single, cohesive plan for completing the Grand Avenue Project. Except that the city of Los Angeles has outlined exactly where they want it to be, the project “plan” seems to be, “We’ll figure it out when we get there.” And there’s really nothing “master” about this development either, as no one is ever sure about who’s in charge of what. At one point it seemed like there was going to be an open invitation for bidding to design the space. At one point it looked like the Los Angeles Times was asking for input from the public regarding what should be in the park. At one point, the developer, Related Companies, stepped in and said, “This is exactly what it’s going to look like.” At one point along the way, Frank Gehry’s office was involved. At one point they hired a dually-trained architect/landscape architect to come up with the overall design.
But this isn’t going to be a summary of the political wheelings and dealings of the Grand Avenue Project, despite the fact that the juicy gossip of a sudden overhaul in management or leadership is the only thing that seems to put this project back into the “local” section of the Times. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who’s in charge of the Grand Avenue project because (and this is tough for me to say, so bear with me) it will probably be a failure no matter how much money they dump into it. What’s worse is that they may not even have enough money for that.
It sounds fatalistic, but it’s very, very hard to be sold by the grand visions for this development. Honua (a collective of Korean Insurance firms), Istithmar World Capital PJSC (the Dubai-based investment firm who’s an equity partner in the project) and Related Companies (the developer who’s more than likely paying for the vast majority of this 16-acre project) all signed onto the project at different points of time, but all along this project (like many others in the City of Los Angeles) is transparent and totally shameless. The focus isn’t on the park and public space, no matter what kind of hype the city spoon-feeds community organizations and the media. This project is about the Frank Gehry-designed skyscraper, The Grand, a luxury hotel/loft megacomplex outfitted with shopping, theaters, and all kindsa hoopla, guaranteed to warrant buyer’s remorse unless each space is filled immediately upon project completion.
Timothy Leary-influenced Grand Avenue design
Let’s be brutal: the money’s just not there. Frank Gehry’s office knows it, Related Companies knows it, and the City of Los Angeles knows it. In fact, Paul Novak, one of Supervisor Michael Antonovich’s planning deputies, basically told the L.A. Times that “given the stark economic climate, our best approach may be less of a ‘grand’ vision than the plan previously approved by the county and the city.” Did the city clear that with Istithmar or Honua, who’re going to shell out part of the $3 billion that this project will take to construct? Or, worse, was this change dictated to the city from these investors and Related Cos.?
How “grand” was the original design? Aside from several vague conceptual sketches, the vision for the design of the Grand Avenue Project has changed pretty drastically. The 2006 master plan for the space presents a grandiose vision for what to do with a large, empty expanse in northern downtown. A nice downtown park would be a welcome addition to the landscape, though I’d rather not use references to New York’s Central Park or Millennium Park in Chicago. As long as we approach it as a uniquely downtown Los Angeles phenomenon, like Olvera Street or the Art Walk, we can’t lose. But, of course, that’s not how developers are marketing this project. I suppose you can let this kind of thing pass if you want to get investors on board.
But it wasn’t always this way. The Los Angeles Times and Norman Lear Center tried getting everyone involved back when this project was announced in 2005 with a project that they called the “Grand Intervention.” The Times asked for design submissions from the public and got thousands of responses at all levels of professionalism. Check out the Lear Center website for some of the better and more interesting submissions. I especially like some of those from young children ... wholesome, use-focused visions for the park that you wouldn’t get from a big developer. Or (apparently) from Related Cos., who were clear that they might glance over a few of the quaint submissions from our greenhorn Los Angeles designers, but they wanted a “professional” to design the space.
the Mark Rios vision
Enter architect Brenda Levin of Levin & Associates and architects and landscape architects Rios Clementi Hale Studios, who designed the first completed master plan for the Grand Avenue Park. Dealing with the massive egos of Related Companies, her own office, and Gehry’s office on the commercial side led Levin to leave the project in 2006. I don’t blame her: at the time, this project involved little money but a lot of political turmoil. The hassle simply outweighed the benefits.
As for Mark Rios and company, they presented their two-phase project this past April. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne was less than impressed, especially after seeing the price tag for this less-than-visionary design in this less-than-convenient location, He suggested that Rios’s office could hand off the project, though “The kind of landscape architect with the talent to bring real energy and vision to this project might reasonably insist on starting from scratch.” Ouch. Naturally, starting from scratch after three years of hype isn’t exactly part of Related Cos. plan, so we may be trapped with Rios’s designs no matter what.
This isn’t all Hawthorne had to say about the design:
The double-design strategy would be far more effective if the plans themselves had more to offer. The base plan is uninspired, a collection of scenic overlooks and arcing gardens that with the exception of some clever updates to the 50-year-old fountain on the Civic Center mall never rises past the level of brightly hued practicality. Even the enhanced design—which adds a large pedestrian bridge across Broadway—is largely prosaic.
At this point, everything about the Grand Avenue project seems like a letdown. Maybe it would be smarter to start from scratch, reprogram the entire project, and put together a realistic timeline with realistic phases on a realistic budget. But that would be a huge waste of the money already spent, and the resources that have already gone into getting this far....
Let’s get to the point, though, four years too late: Why are we even doing projects like this? The economy’s sucky, money’s hard to come by for even the most basic “uninspired” version, not to mention the “prosaic” advanced variation. What exactly are we spending our hard-earned taxpayers’ money on here? What was the ultimate goal of this development? Or was it the same as it’s always been, a rewrite of the same old Los Angeles development story: a sinkhole for money that should be going to the redevelopment of places that need it. The next half-thought-through, half-programmed, and half-financed phase of the Oldest Masterplan in Los Angeles. Seriously, could someone out there explain to me why redeveloping Bunker Hill is such an urgent priority?
We see the story play out, story arc for story arc, the same way each time, with this and other projects that need similar funding, or more. Are we going to keep jumping onto new bandwagons? Or will we ever, finally, learn our lessons?
www.racaia.com | tony@fourstory.org
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