Agency Sued Over Pershing Square Towers

A downtown preservation group sued Los Angeles’ redevelopment agency Friday over a proposed $300-million office and hotel complex near Pershing Square, challenging an agreement that would allow the complex to be much larger than what is ordinarily allowed under city zoning laws.

The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that the agreement does not allow a full study of the project’s environmental effects and fails to consider options for preserving nearby buildings in one of the city’s oldest districts.

It was the second suit filed by the Los Angeles Conservancy, a group working to save historic buildings downtown, challenging the 1.2-million-square-foot complex of 35-story and 45-story towers that is planned as the cornerstone of an ambitious plan to revitalize Pershing Square.

The basis of the suit is a “density transfer” agreement that allows the complex to be more than 640,000 square feet larger than what would ordinarily be allowed under city zoning laws by transferring unused building capacity from other downtown sites.

$11.2-Million Deal

The City Redevelopment Agency has proposed selling to the developers of the complex the building rights from four of the agency’s own sites, planned for parking garages, for $11.2 million.

Conservancy officials say that instead of transferring the building credits from the four parking garage sites, they should instead be transferred from an existing historic building. That way, the $11.2 million could be spent on restoring the building, rather than flowing into the redevelopment agency’s coffers.

Moreover, the city should have the authority to conduct a full review of the potential environmental impact of the transfer agreements, the conservancy says in its suit, claiming that the redevelopment agency’s own environmental studies do not adequately analyze the project’s effect on parking and traffic downtown.