GBD Architects

The latest chapter in a six-year Hollywood development saga starts next week when money-bags real estate conglomerate CIM Group will reportedly break ground on a controversial project that has already eaten up millions of dollars of city money in a protracted legal fight with perturbed neighbors.

In 2008, Sunset Gordon Mixed-Use Project set a record for the number of entitlements--17--approved by the Department of City Planning.

Critics said a project in need of that many planing and zoning exceptions was ill-conceived and wrong for the area, but the Community Redevelopment Agency forged ahead, not only pledging $17.5 million in support of the project, but advancing the developer $3.668 million to fight local opponents in court.

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Out with a bang.

Today is a very special day.

Today is the day that all 400 redevelopment agencies (RDAs) across California -- including the massive L.A. Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) -- are shut down for good. And all the property taxes they've been raking in, for buildings within areas they've declared "blighted," will now go directly to the state for essential costs like education and emergency services.

Woot woot! This calls for a little celebration. Leave it to oddball Los Angeles citywatchers John Walsh and Miki Jackson, of HollywoodHighlands.org, to host a bona fide funeral party (emphasis on the party) for the CRA ...

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Ding dong, the witch is dead!

A pack of veteran L.A. City Hall gadflies will have a little fun, this Wednesday, with Governor Jerry Brown's big bloody butchering of California's redevelopment agencies (RDAs) -- and the notorious L.A. Community Redevelopment Agency, in particular.

Miki Jackson (No. 1 enemy of the slimy Community College Board) and John Walsh (Hollywood density-watcher with the most wonderfully terrible necktie collection this side of City Councilman Tom LaBonge) are holding "Drop Dead CRA Day"...

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The new Courtyard and Residence Inns (right) will sit directly across from two more Marriott hotels.

A double Marriott hotel project that will occupy the lot across from L.A. Live just got a huge boost from you, the Los Angeles taxpayer.

You have the L.A. City Council -- and downtown Councilwoman Jan Perry, in particular -- to thank for that. As a big warm thank-you for all the jobs and economic prosperity that developer Williams/Dame & Associates is promising to create in the heart of L.A., the city has approved a contract...

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Site of the new Ace.

As if downtown could take one more hipster, the Ace Hotel chain is opening a venue on Broadway.

Post-hangover, you might retain some memory of the Ace Palm Springs bar from your last trip to Coachella:

Yeah, that place.

The office of City Councilman Jose Huizar this week announced the development with breathless prose:

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Maybe Metro could fly the cars into NBCUniversal to reduce freeway congestion in Studio City.

Angelenos who drive between downtown, Hollywood and San Fernando Valley dodged a bullet with the cancellation of Metro and NBCUniversal's bizarre plan for a skyscraper at the Red Line subway stop near Universal City -- a $3 billion project dubbed Metro Studios@Lankershim.

News stories yesterday left out the fact that Metro had shilled the Hollywood Freeway-adjacent project, to be built by Thomas Properties Group, as a "transit-oriented development" that would reduce congestion. Utter bunk. No skyscraper in our Milky Way System ever cut traffic. Ever.

You know a project is good-and-dead when its former web site is entirely in Chinese.

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Mitch Handsone

Brown: Boo-ya.

The struggle between hundreds of California redevelopment agencies and Governor Jerry Brown, who bashed them for stealing millions from schools and essential services, is over.

The governor wins this round, with flying colors.

Not only did a California Supreme Court judge rule, this morning, that Assembly Bill 1X 26 -- which tried to abolish the agencies, and was signed by Brown in June -- is legal. The judge then ruled the other way on Assembly Bill 1X 27, a sort of consolation package that would have let an agency remain if it paid a large portion of its "profits" to the state.

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Illustration by Jack Balingit

Forty stories? That's nothin'!

Hollywood is about to become a sea of skyscrapers. And our only consolation prize is a goddamned cat park.

Opponents to L.A.'s new "Hollywood Community Plan" never stood a chance. As if it wasn't off-putting enough that today's Planning Commission meeting was scheduled for 8:30 a.m. -- with little to no public notice -- the commission scheduled another hot topic for very same morning: approval of the New West Charter High School near Stoner Park. (Which, like the community plan, passed with flying colors, despite similar protests from nearby residents who don't think their 'hood can handle any more clog.)

By the time the Hollywood Community Plan was finally addressed around noon, a pool of 50-odd naysayers had drained...

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LA Curbed

Two towering 'scrapers adjacent to Capitol Records will only be the beginning.

Update: "Hollywood Community Plan, aka Skyscraper Hell, Approved by L.A. Planning Commission at Dodgy Meeting."

Tomorrow morning, at the ungodly hour of 8:30 a.m., the L.A. Planning Commission will vote on a new "community plan" for Hollywood that could change our city as we know it.

It's not as glamorous, PR-friendly or conveniently timed as those other Department of City Planning shenanigans you've been hearing about -- those that seek to lift the ban on street art in Los Angeles.

And for that, tomorrow's meeting may not be as well-attended. Here's where you come in.

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Associated Press

Maybe the cash fell through the cracks of Eli Broad's city-subsidized museum?

Of $27 million that the L.A. Community Development Agency was supposed to collect from property owners in blighted areas and redistribute into the community, City Controller Wendy Greuel says she can't find $1.7 million.

So. Did public employees at the agency (and their friends on the City Council) stash $1.7 million in some sneaky backdoor bank account, or just kind of lose track of it along the way?

We're not really sure which would be worse.

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la.indymedia.org

Butcher paper is no match for a sweet development deal.

We knew L.A. City Councilwoman Jan Perry liked to cozy up to rich real-estate types, but this takes City Hall's sleazy development hounding to new lows.

It all started in 2003, when the city sold a South L.A. land parcel hosting the community's beloved South Central Farm to developer Ralph Horowitz -- on the promise that 2.6 acres would be turned back into a park. For the last half-decade, a group of South L.A. residents known as the South Central Farmers have been protesting, passing around petitions and flat-out begging...

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bugamerica.com

Hollywood and Western: Enter if you dare.

Update: A man dressed in a clown suit came to the couple's rescue this morning, sheriff's investigators tell KTLA. (At least someone was on duty.)

The billions that L.A. has pumped into redeveloping Hollywood over the last couple decades -- mostly blown on high-rises and hip watering holes -- has done little to abate its serious state of ghetto-ness.

And no spot in the city has become more of a cesspool for grime and crime than the Metro Red Line station(s) in Hollywood. Well, except maybe Skid Row. But at least permanent bum camps have a bit of a homey feel -- the Hollywood and Western station is no one's home. It's a place you throw your gum and spit your lougie and puke your sorrows for someone else to clean up. (Read: no one.) And, apparently, a place to stab your victims in cold blood:

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Ted Soqui

Mid City residents' beautiful view of a concrete wall

A few months ago Mars Melnicoff chronicled the on-going saga surrounding the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) created blight of a Lowes Home Improvement Center in Mid City. The newly erected 70-foot south wall of the building ruined the once glorious view of the Hollywood hills for residents on 16th place and decimated the property values of the homes.

When The Neighborhood News (TNN), a community paper in Mid City, demanded answers from Councilmember Herb Wesson...

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LA Downtown News

Gensler already knows just how to decorate.

Funny how L.A. City Councilmembers are acting all sympathetic toward the 99 percent camping on their front lawn -- then making sweet deals with millionaire companies so the well-off don't have to pay a dime. When as far as we can tell, that's pretty much exactly the type of behavior Occupy is spitting on.

In today's column, Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times quotes from extremely humiliating emails between Thomas Properties Group -- who was, at the time, wooing filthy-rich architecture firm Gensler into its downtown digs -- and City Councilwoman Jan Perry, one of the biggest development hounds in L.A. government.

After just a few days of correspondance...

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City of Billboards

NYC isn't the only one who thinks L.A. wants to be Manhattanized -- our own city leaders seem to be under the same supergraphic spell.

But don't get too excited, NYU film-school rejects who settled for USC: We're not talking Manhattanized in a cute, compact "these lights will inspire you" kind of way. We're talking a wasteland of giant ugly rectangles on sticks, slathered in adverts and jutting from the relatively flat landscape into the smog. Real cruddy stuff. Either that, or...

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Gensler

The Sunset Strip apocalypse, on steroids.

How to describe Centrum Sunset, the 51,000-square-foot project proposed for the mostly vacant, borderline-blighted lot at 8801 Sunset Boulevard, former site of the historic Tower Records building?

West Hollywood planning commissioners gave it their best shot at public hearings on July 7 and August 4:

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Facebook

There comes a time in every sleepy suburban town's life when it must go head-to-head with the Wal-Mart empire. There is the initial outcry -- the sidewalk picketers, the angry speeches at City Council meetings -- and, too often, the inevitable defeat.

(Followed by a sheepish midnight trip to pick up a jumbo pack of unbeatably cheap toilet paper. Don't deny it.)

In the case of Burbank, a growing "No Wall Mart" Facebook campaign in response to the monster chain's purchase of the 12-acre Great Indoors facility in the Empire Center is a little puzzling:

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Top picture before "the wall," bottom picture after "the wall," with blocked views of Hollywood Hills

"The wall went up in a day. I went away in the morning, and I came back later and couldn't see the city."

So says 16th Place Neighborhood Association member Robert Portillo, who's now fighting L.A. City Hall with his neighbors to somehow stop the construction of a huge wall that has blocked their views of the Hollywood Hills:

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Hollywood High, movie-star hotspot gone crazy ghetto, might finally get some glory back

Updated after the jump: Redevelopment honchos aren't going to take this sitting down.

Budget-butchering California Governor Jerry Brown watched angrily the last few months as the state's rogue redevelopment agencies launched last-ditch efforts to preserve millions of dollars in profits and projects -- anticipating that Brown would stamp them out altogether come June.

But the state Legislature, likely urged into fast action by the governor himself, has taken a different route:

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veteranstoday.com

"Locked Out of West LA VA"

You can often hear West L.A. residents, and those on the nearby Santa Monica border, whining about the rampant homeless-veteran population in their area (which is trying desperately to gentrify -- to polish itself into the next Brentwood or Beverly Hills). They complain about ranting, raving vets who drift onto their sidewalks after visiting the West L.A. veterans' hospital, one of a scarce few facilities dedicated to their rehabilitation on a 387-acre parcel donated to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs some 130 years ago, to be used for housing Civil War heroes and beyond.

But a class-action ACLU lawsuit, filed today in U.S. district court, points out that the majority of the parcel...

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