The Downtown skyline could soon get a bit more cluttered, as a developer filed plans with the city yesterday calling for three new towers to be constructed across the street from LA Live.
The trio of structures would go up on a parking lot at Olympic and Georgia. Plans indicate the project would include 1,367 units of housing, along with 20,000 square feet of restaurant space and another 20,000 square feet of commercial space. The buildings would be constructed on top of a parking structure with more than 2,100 spaces.
Update: a press release from the developer notes that the project will be called “Olympia†and is being designed by architectural firms Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Patterns. In addition to the residential and commercial space, it will also include 115,000 square feet of “open, green, and public spaces,†including a public pocket park along Georgia Street and a plaza at the corner of Georgia and Olympic.
The three towers will be terraced to provide residents with uninterrupted views of the surrounding skyline. The tallest of the structures will rise 65 stories, but at 43 and 52 stories, the other two towers will be plenty tall as well.
Each tower will also include common areas and amenity terraces where residents can “connect and be seen.†The release notes that the project is “designed to attract Downtown Los Angeles’ growing ‘creative class,’†which probably means the price tag on those units will be pretty high.
The project is being developed by City Century—a subsidiary of Shanghai-based development firm ShengLong Group. In 2015, the company spent $26 million on a nearby property at 12th and Grand, with plans to erect a pair of condo towers on the site.
Later, Urbanize LA noticed preliminary renderings for the project on City Century’s website, along with plans for the massive development proposed yesterday. Those plans called for two hotels with 125-150 and 400-500 rooms, respectively. It’s not clear whether plans for the hotel portion of the project have been abandoned entirely, but the documents submitted to the city yesterday don’t mention a hotel component.
Interestingly, the development site is located on the opposite side of Georgia Street from another scrapped hotel concept: AEG’s expansion of the Marriott at LA Live, which the company decided not to build after a disagreement with the city over plans for the redevelopment of the Convention Center.
Meanwhile, developers of another hotel proposed just north of City Century’s development site recently requested economic incentives from the city for building the project—considerately agreeing to spend $150,000 studying which incentives the city might be able to offer.
