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South Park Takes Right Direction

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The architectural stew that, hopefully, will add some flavor to South Park--on the edge of downtown--at last is bubbling.

A bit of spice was added last week when the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency approved the schematic plans for the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, which will be located on Grand Avenue, just north of Olympic Boulevard.

The institute is being designed by the Jerde Partnership with its now characteristic flair for busy facades; hopefully not too busy or too cliche as the firm searches for an appropriate style to express the school and its varied uses.

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Making the challenge more interesting is that the institute is being developed by the Ratkovich Co. to include in its perky five-story structure retail shops, a gallery, a fashion museum and cafes--in addition to classrooms and other usual school spaces.

The multiple use of the projected $22-million building makes both design and economic sense, and should help energize the neighborhood.

Next up for approval by the CRA is the schematic design for Park Place, a 192-unit apartment building to be located at the northwest corner of Grand Avenue and Olympic Boulevard, adjacent to the Fashion Institute. The item is scheduled to go before the agency this week.

Park Place is being designed by San Diego architect Rob Wellington Quigley in association with the Nadel Partnership and John Williams as a 10- and 18-story tower complex in a style that at this stage can best be described as idiosyncratic. Glimpses of early studies revealed a hard-edged geometric massing straining to be a statement.

While reportedly the more recent studies were toned down in deference to function and neighbors, hopefully, the spirit of the building to be more than just another slab of apartment units will persevere, and Quigley and company will demonstrate that affordable housing also can be aesthetic.

Attempting to prove that also in the South Park area, albeit in somewhat more subdued styles, are architects Kurt Meyer and Clifton Allen of the Meyer Partnership, and Daniel Dworsky Associates.

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Meyer and Allen have designed a 200-unit, eight- and 14-story apartment complex at 9th Street and Grand Avenue to be called Parkside and developed by the Lowy Corp. Plans indicate a modified Post-Moderne style, with a playful use of columns and arches and a respectful bow to adjacent buildings.

Busier is Dworsky’s design of a 270-unit Skyline 11 project for Forest City Dillon. It calls for a low rise on Hope Street, containing ground-floor retail, second-floor commercial and third-floor residential use, and a 14-story apartment tower on Flower Street. The total is a street-sensitive urban mix.

Both Skyline and Parkside already have been approved. Their construction is scheduled to start late this year, to be followed early next year by the construction of the Fashion Institute and Park Place, the latter if its schematics are accepted at this week’s CRA commissioners meeting.

The focus of this emerging community will be Grand Hope Park, a 2.5-acre intensely landscaped, lushly planted space at Olympic Boulevard and, as its name indicates, Grand Avenue and Hope Street. Its construction is expected to start this summer.

Designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, assisted by the local firm of Campbell & Campbell, the park will contain a variety of spaces for playing, displaying art, eating or just sitting and letting the world go by. There also will be a rich variety of tropical and subtropical plants that promise to “celebrate the Los Angeles climate with a scale and range not found elsewhere downtown.”

Marking the park with a Southern California style will be a clock tower, pergolas and trellises focused on a broad inner courtyard in the center of which will be a large, playful fountain. The court also will be used as an outdoor theater.

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The plan for the park is purposeful, energetic and imaginative, as it must be. The planners realize well that the success of South Park as a neighborhood with a public presence instead of just a collection of secured, well-styled structures depends on the success of Grand Hope Park.

It cannot be treated as an afterthought, an extra, or the roof of a garage, but as the keystone in the urban design of South Park.

Beyond the ambitious plans are a few recently completed projects in the emerging South Park area worthy of applause.

The new local branch of the Federal Reserve Bank at Grand Avenue and Olympic Boulevard, designed by Dworsky Associates and dedicated this spring is a well-massed, nicely detailed structure.

The red-polished granite facade forming a flowing two-story pedestrian arcade is a respectful gesture to present-day styles and the adjoining, projected streetscape.

Also of interest is how the wall bows out toward the street, enclosing a four-story atrium that lends light to the bank’s lobby. Less friendly are the lobby’s black marble columns and maple wood paneling, though the smooth and efficient interior designed by Gensler & Associates has a banker’s gray tone that somehow seems correct.

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The Dworsky design also is sympathetically scaled to the original bank building, next door at 409 W. Olympic Blvd., a noble 1929 landmark designed by John Parkinson. The fervent hope is that the original structure with its marvelous, marble floored and decorated ceiling main room will be recycled for some appropriate use by the bank or a preservation-minded buyer.

Also quite sympathetic and exceptionally well-styled is the new patient care tower for the venerable California Hospital Medical Center at 1401 S. Grand Ave., anchoring the street. Designed by Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz Architects of San Francisco, the center was sited and landscaped with sensitivity, creating an oasis at the southern end of South Park.

In addition to apparently functioning well--an assumption by someone who is not a doctor, hospital administrator or patient--the complex, clad in a bright tile composed with a flair and marked by an abundance of windows, looks almost jaunty. For a hospital, that is an accomplishment.

Founded in 1887, the hospital celebrated its 100th birthday this year, with the tower an architectural gift to Los Angeles and downtown.

The result of all this activity is that the patient that is South Park is looking better, thanks to the hospital, the Federal Reserve, a few inspired architects and developers and the caring of those embattled CRA staff members dedicated to good urban design.

And let us not forget the contribution of Edward Helfeld, the former director of CRA who just last week was named head of San Francisco’s redevelopment program. It was Helfeld who prescribed the recuperative program for South Park that is now being carried out by the agency.

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Though they are now embracing the program, it was not too long ago that a few of the agency’s board members were giving Helfeld and the CRA staff a very hard time on South Park. Indeed, it was one of the items that eventually led to Helfeld’s falling out with the board and the city.

Happily, the vision of Helfeld and the staff of South Park has survived, at least to the present.

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