Developer Jason Illoulian of Faring Capital is the new owner of the land under the restaurant and its 43 parking spaces ... his plan: To build a “community of shops” where the parking lot now stands. [...]

“It’s such a beautiful building and that sign is just like fucking awesome,” he says.

Will there be room in this new village for an $11.99 steak dinner? “We’re hoping to keep it as a 24- hour diner,” says Illoulian of the restaurant space. “Whether it’s Norms or somebody else.” — lamag.com

"From the beginning, I wanted to give a sense of the variety of scale of the studio’s projects, from the more intimate objects like the Christmas cards to large-scale mockups like those for the Paternoster Square vents. [...]

Thomas is trained as a designer and not as an architect and he has always made things as a way to test his ideas. He often mentions how unusual it is that most architects have never actually made anything themselves." – Brooke Hodge — LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design

...the $1.1 billion question hangs in the air: Is the 405 any more relieved of congestion than when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Congressman Brad Sherman and County Supervisor Gloria Molina demanded in 2006 that L.A.'s "fair share" of state bond money be used to add carpool lanes to the 405? The answer is no. A traffic study by Seattle-based...Inrix has shown that auto speeds during the afternoon crawl on the northbound 405 are now the same or slightly slower... — LA Weekly

After investing five years and $50 million in an attempt to bring an NFL team back to Los Angeles, AEG is abandoning plans for its Farmers Field football stadium downtown.

The sports and entertainment conglomerate is no longer in discussions with the NFL or any teams about the project, company officials said Monday. [...]

In recent weeks, competing stadium proposals in Inglewood and Carson, backed by NFL team owners, have overshadowed the AEG plan. — latimes.com

That unattractive strip mall on the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights boulevards ... will be razed in favor of a Frank Gehry-designed mixed-use development [...]

The state last year deemed the project to be L.A. County's first California Environmental Leadership Development Project.

To qualify developments must see at least $100 million in investment, achieve LEED Silver certification or better, and emit zero net greenhouse gases. — laweekly.com

In the last 20 years, just one NFL stadium has been built solely through private funding. [...]

Still, when it comes to getting the best deal out of an arena, leaving taxpayer money off the tab is only a good start.

Studies have repeatedly shown that sports teams don’t have the far-reaching economic impacts that one might assume, and experts have noted that stadiums aren’t as catalytic as some franchise owners might tout. — nextcity.org

A new study by Thomas Laidley, a sociology doctoral student at NYU [...], uses satellite images to develop a new and improved “Sprawl Index,” which he links to a wide range of outcome measures.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that L.A. ranks as the least sprawling metro in the country, ahead of New York and San Francisco. — citylab.com

Architect Elizabeth Diller [...] stood on the Grand Avenue sidewalk Friday morning in front of the Broad museum, which she designed with her New York firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and is set to open Sept. 20.

Was she giving an architectural preview? Doing damage control? Trying to regain some influence over the narrative of the museum’s construction, which has been beset by delays, fabrication problems and legal wrangling?

The answer seemed to be some combination of the three. — latimes.com