Ten months after our last update, the concrete skeleton of a Frank Gehry-designed tower complex is steadily rising in Downtown Los Angeles.
The $1-billion development, called The Grand, replaced a parking structure across the street from the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Plans call for two towers - standing 39 and 20 stories in height - featuring 349 market-rate apartments, 87 affordable housing units, and a 309-room hotel. The two high-rise buildings will share a retail podium consisting of 176,000 square feet of shops and restaurants.
Gehry's design for The Grand uses a series of upper-level setbacks to create amenity decks and terraces for use by residents, hotel guests, and other visitors. The development site will be bisected by an east-west paseo linking Olive Street to Grand Avenue, while also preserving view corridors of the concert hall.
Developers Related California and CORE USA expect to complete construction of The Grand in late 2021.
The mixed-use complex is the third component of the Grand Avenue project, in which a series of Los Angeles County- and City-owned sites are being redeveloped into public open space and commercial uses. Several phases of the project - including The Emerson apartment tower, The Broad contemporary art museum, and the 12-acre Grand Park - have already opened. A final phase of the project is slated for another publicly-owned site at the intersection of 1st and Olive Streets.
Additional projects planned for the area include a proposed 200,000-square-foot expansion of the Colburn School - which is also being designed by Gehry - and a new public plaza at 2nd and Olive Streets.
- The Grand (Urbanize LA)
