Chris Loos WELCOME HOME

Recently, the Urbanize LA team had the good fortune to receive a tour of one of Los Angeles’ highest profile projects: the 73-story Wilshire Grand. Today, we’re pleased to be able to share the photos from that tour with our readers. We hope you enjoy these photos as much as we enjoyed getting a close up view of the West Coast’s soon-to-be tallest tower. Special thanks to Dan Dorn of Turner Construction and Laura Walsh of Cerrell Associates for making this tour possible, and a big thank you to Hunter Kerhart for the excellent photos.

Last week, Urbanize LA had the chance to visit Shelter: Rethinking How We Live in Los Angeles- the first exhibition at the A+D Museum since it landed in its new home in Downtown LA’s Arts District. The exhibition features works from local architecture and design firms Bureau Spectacular, LA-Más, LOHA, MAD Architects, PAR, and wHY. Shelter focuses on residential architecture in Los Angeles, and how it adapts to solve new problems and fulfill new needs as our city transforms and urbanizes.

AIA award winning architect Doug Ewing FAIA has teamed up with Mi Casa Property on the Villas at Bear Creek Country Club, a new single-family subdivision in the Inland Empire. The project sits in the foothills of Murrieta and overlooks the Country Club and its famous Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course, known for its rolling hills, lakes and natural terrain. The Villas consist of eight townhome-style dwellings with alternating floor plans.

Today marks the beginning of a new running feature here at Urbanize LA: Throwback Thursday. With so much development happening across our city these days, we thought it might be fun to start taking a look back at how far we’ve come. Today’s TBT comes from photographer Hunter Kerhart. The before photo was snapped in January 2013, and the after photo was taken September 2015. The before/after shots highlight several new projects (and renovations…hint, hint) throughout downtown.

Today’s Throwback Thursday is a pair of nighttime shots of the Downtown LA skyline from photographer Hunter Kerhart. Taken only nine months apart, they illustrate how quickly and dramatically the Wilshire Grand has altered the skyline. The tower has not even topped out yet, with several more floors, a glass dome, and a mast still be constructed. We can’t wait to see the finished product, and take in the new multi-peak Los Angeles skyline.

Today’s TBT features a pair of shots of DTLA’s skyline taken from the east- one from November 2013 and the second from December 2015. Among the visible differences: Which skyline-altering projects are you most looking forward to two years from now?

Downtown LA’s Fashion District has seen a handful of residential adaptive reuse projects recently, but now something new is coming to the neighborhood: executive office space and high-end retail. Downtown Executive Multiplex by Strategic Legacy Investment Group (SLIG) is a $3.5 million renovation project currently underway at 221 E 12th Street— just a stone’s throw from Santee Alley. The 4-story 29,654 SF building formerly known as the Santee Center was originally built in 1989, and up until now contained a mix of uses typical for this part of town: discount retail on the ground floor with light manufacturing and storage space above.

Downtown residents, community leaders, greenspace advocates and members of the media braved the cold yesterday morning to celebrate the opening of the Hope Street Parklet — South Park’s first and Downtown Los Angeles’ third. Located on South Hope Street just south of 11th Street, the parklet fronts a parking garage that was recently reonvated to include new ground-level retail space and across the street from tthe venerable Desmond Warehouse, now home to the offices of AEG Live.

Renderings of four competing designs for the First & Broadway Civic Park in Downtown Los Angeles were presented at a public meeting earlier this week. The four teams competing were led by AECOM, Brooks + Scarpa, Eric Owen Moss, and Mia Lehrer + Associates, with several other firms supporting each lead. The proposed two-acre green space will comprise a full city block of the Civic Center, bounded by 1st Street, Broadway, Spring Street and Grand Park.

Lightstone, a privately-held real estate firm based out of New York, has officially announced plans for a large mixed-use complex near the Los Angeles Convention Center. The project, to be known as Fig+Pico, would replace a parking lot and a small commercial building at the northeast corner of Figueroa Street and Pico Boulevard. Plans call for the construction two hotel towers containing approximately 1,100 guest rooms, meeting spaces, amenities and 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.