News and bits
Shoreline Square tower in Downtown Long BeachParallel Capital Partners, Inc.
Parallel Capital Partners, Inc. has signed an $80-million lease renewal agreement with the U.S. General Services Administration for office space at the Shoreline Square tower in Downtown Long Beach. The deal will span 140,000 square feet of office space at 301 E. Ocean Boulevard.
The AlhambraThe Ratkovich Company
Last month, The Ratkovich Company announced lease renewals for 117,846 square feet of office space at The Alhambra complex. Returning tenants include the Los Angeles County's Department of Public Works, District Attorney, and Department of Public Health. Alhambra Hospital Medical Center has also taken 16,767 square feet for an additional two years.
9903 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly HillsNewmark
Last week, Newmark announced the $74.4 million sale of the five-story medical office building at 9033 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The buyer of the nearly 50,000-square-foot building, which is anchored by USC's Keck Medical Center, is reportedly LaSalle Investment Management - a subsidiary of JLL.
3317 Exposition PlaceGoogle Street View
The Luzzatto Company, which is already developing a handful of office properties near Expo/Crenshaw Station, is adding another site to its portfolio. The company recently paid $22.5 million to purchase a building located at 3317 Exposition Place from Lion Real Estate Group. The two-story, nearly 30,000-square-foot building is occupied by online retailer TheRealReal.
Things to read from the past week:
How Metro Successfully Tunneled Through Challenging Conditions For First Wilshire Subway Extension Some wonky stuff about the project that a Metro representative described to Streetsblog as “easily most complex engineering feat in the modern history of Metro rail construction.” (Streetsblog LA)
A tale of two reckonings: How should Manhattan Beach atone for its racist past? "The story of Bruce’s Beach, historians say, is sadly all too common. And in an affluent city such as Manhattan Beach, where Black residents today make up less than 1% of the population and the N-word still gets shouted at out-of-town surfers, these uncomfortable details from both past and present can no longer be ignored." (LA Times)
View of the Downtown skyline and the US-110 freeway in 2018Hunter Kerhart Architectural Photography
Passenger vehicle travel reaches pre-pandemic levels in L.A. and several other U.S. cities "Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia show similar patterns, where the weekend traffic has rebounded higher than the weekday traffic. Passenger vehicle miles hit 99% of their pre-pandemic levels in Los Angeles on March 21 after falling to well below half their norm in late March 2020." (KTLA)
Housing Demolition and Redevelopment in Los Angeles "To the extent Los Angeles is meeting its housing production goals, is it doing so by building on underused sites, with minimal loss to the existing housing stock and minimal community disruption? Or are we often simply trading older, more affordable homes for newer, more expensive ones? The answers to these questions should inform the city and region’s housing policy going forward. If new homes are mostly supplementing rather than replacing the existing housing stock, then our policies may be on the right track. But if losses to the existing housing stock are high, especially of units with more affordable rents, a course change may be warranted." (UCLA Lewis Center)
New FAQ on Oscars at Union Station and impact to riders "Pedestrians will be able to access Union Station West from April 5-23 and April 26-29 via the South Patio breezeway. On April 24 and 25, pedestrians will only be able to access Union Station via Union Station East." (The Source)
Forget Union Station. The Oscars should be held at the Music Center "Located a mere seven blocks from Union Station (just in case someone is interested in taking Amtrak to the Academy Awards), the site located over three city blocks is practically designed to host a socially distanced event made up of a variety of components, be it performances, presentations, speeches or dead-people montage." (LA Times)
Grand Park in Downtown Los AngelesWikimedia Commons
Opinion: L.A. wants to bulldoze Latino neighborhoods to expand a freeway. Biden shouldn’t help "When L.A. built its freeway system, it rerouted the elaborate designs of freeway engineers — often at considerable expense — to avoid white neighborhoods and instead destroy thousands of homes in racially diverse communities such as Boyle Heights. Many of the freeway exiles who lost their homes wound up settling in southeast L.A. County cities such as Downey, where their neighborhoods are now once again on the chopping block." (LA Times)
Major Decisions Loom in a Landmark Lawsuit Over Homelessness in Los Angeles "The judge’s looming decision comes amid unprecedented police enforcement in Echo Park Lake that relocated unhoused people from the park last week. While Carter has joined City Council members Bob Blumenfield and Mike Bonin for enforcement actions in their San Fernando Valley and Venice districts, the Echo Park Lake enforcement came at the direction of the councilman for the area, Mitch O’Farrell, and Carter wasn’t involved....The multi-day enforcement, which included a huge presence of uniformed officers along with social services workers, has not yet been mentioned in official court filings in the lawsuit, and Carter hasn’t publicly weighed in. But the firebrand judge, who turned 77 last Sunday, has always pushed a humanitarian approach to homelessness over law enforcement." (Los Angeles Magazine)
Has Become a Magnet for EV Charging Startups. Biden's Plan Could Supercharge Them. LA already had 10,000 charging stations, and plans to roll out 15,000 more by 2025, according to the Mayor's office. (dot LA)
Rendering of The Lucas Museum of Narrative ArtMAD Architects
Lucas Museum pushes opening to 2023 as COVID-19 protocols slow construction "Health and safety protocols have slowed progress, museum Director Sandra Jackson-Dumont said by email Thursday. 'Substantial construction,' originally on track to finish this year, is now expected to continue into 2022." (LA Times)
City of Los Angeles to Declare Tacos the Official Food I know it's just an April Fool's joke, but would it be the worst idea? (LA TACO)
No, We’re Not Getting a Federal VMT Tax (But Maybe We Should) "The concept of a VMT tax has long captured the imagination of safe streets advocates for a simple reason: it’s one of the few funding strategies that at least attempts to reflect the costs that excessive driving itself poses upon U.S. roads, as opposed to the societal costs of excessive gasoline consumption alone." (Streetsblog USA)
Metro seeks input on modernizing Highway Program "The changes, if implemented, would open certain Measure R and Measure M funding that is now reserved only for traditional highway or roadway projects to new types of improvements. Those improvements include bikeways, sidewalk and pedestrian safety improvements, bus prioritization and explicitly using reductions in vehicle miles traveled as a criterion for planning and designing projects." (The Source)
