The city of Los Angeles is moving forward with a historic plan from Handel Architects and OLIN for a slice of Downtown’s Bunker Hill neighborhood called Angels Landing.
The LA Times is reporting the city’s granting of entitlements needed to build on the parcel designated Y-1, which features the site of the historic Angels Flight funicular railway system.
The project, backed by developers Victor MacFarlane and R. Donahue Peebles, is being hailed as the largest ever by a Black-owned development firm and, at 1.26 million square feet, is one of the largest in the recent history of the city.
A once bespoke residential area west of LA’s downtown core, Bunker Hill has developed into a commercial high-rise district since the city initiated a redevelopment scheme in the late 1960s.
Now, with only the funky funicular railway remaining as a vestige of what used to be, MacFarlane and Peebles will look to add a mixed-use development dominated by two 42- and 64-story towers that include hotel space for up to 515 guests, 72,000 square feet of retail space, parking areas, 180 condominiums, and 252 for-rent apartments (78 of which are considered affordable).
Additionally, a multi-level public plaza will be created that connects the buildings to the adjacent Metro station and neighboring Grand Avenue. The developers hope to have everything on line in time for the 2028 Olympics. The total project cost is estimated at $1.6 billion. Peebles says a goal of 30% minority- and women-owned business contractors has been set for the project to exceed $480 million.
“We’re raising the bar for economic inclusion for development projects in L.A,” he said.
Archinect will share more updates on the project as they become available.
4 Comments
Could this be any more generic?
What I see is a missed opportunity for a more mature understanding of the site. Any Architect, Architecture student or Urban Developer intimately knows the site, since we all studied it and explored the many facets it brings to Los Angeles, particularly what it brings to the defined line of DTLA Grand Street (upper bracket) and Hill Street lets call it the (lower bracket).
Sure that defined line over the years has mutated into a dystopia of high priced loft surrounded by a gardens of urban tent encampments. The direction of society in Los Angeles has changed, now it's vertical.
What was once defined by streets of lower bracket and higher bracket is now turned into a vertical defined line from the ground up. The tent on the ground being the affordable, protected by highly educated woke Los Angeles.
This site could have turned into the most important public space that all of DTLA could of offered, yet it was missed. DTLA has 4 major parks two pre manufactured into a public space without an understanding of its surrounding. 1. Pershing Square 2. Grand Park.
and two understanding its environment 1 being Griffith park and 2. This site.
one last thing to think about, even if you brand a project comprised of a team of African American/ black owned company or a female owned company, It doesn't matter. At the end of the day it's still performing in the same way as a conventional white collared white owned company that is bulldozing through a site for its own Capitalistic gain. Using woke propaganda now as a tool to gain an advantage over Real Estate Development is at its core a fu***ng joke. We're all better off as a society not having it camouflaged.
With poor management , public spaces in LA becomes places where homeless sleeps , no one wants to be there .
There is no point to waste money on "public space" if no one is talking about properly managing them for the public. Public space need to have destination, a reason for people to stay around with their family , their kids and feel save . While dtla historically with Skid Road next to it will always be a place where homeless can stay; is there anyway that the city can built something to let them stay ? Instead of sending them miles away to suburbs that they cant live without a car ?
Homeless people don’t need a defined “public space” to make it their own. Everything is “public space” for them, even private property can become public space as they see it.
2. From the 80s - 2022 the homeless population has definitely migrated depending on DTLA development and has actually spread to suburbs rather than DTLA. When we were growing up 80-2000 DTLA was filled with gray smog clouds of emptiness. We wouldn’t even imagine to go to DTLA, especially on the weekends. DTLA turned into a dystopian corporate ghost town, only occupied during the weekdays.
3. If one were to see that space and study the characteristics of Bunker Hill, one would understand that the social economic makeup of that site is hard to find in DTLA. How the freeway branches off right into Hill street falls right into that site coming from Pasadena on the 110. How middle class and lower class of society work from Hill street, Broadway and down. How upper white collared workers work on Grand street, Hope, Figueroa St, 7th and 1st let’s call it corporate DTLA
It’s one of the most cosmopolitan sites in its purest sense in all of DTLA. How it even has a connection to the The Los Angeles river and the basin.
In the eye and thinking methodology of an urban designer, landscape designer, Architect and conceptual thinkers of environments, these things matter. As an intuitive developer these things matter. I’m not shi**ing on the developers. My job is to protect developers interests and assets but even developers at times need to be protected from their own self.
This site answered by another building or a condo is like I said before a missed opportunity.
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