Braude Joins Private Firms to Find Design for Westside Development : Competition May Defuse Dispute Over Growth

In a departure from the confrontational politics of urban planning, slow-growth City Councilman Marvin Braude has teamed up with private developers to sponsor an international design competition for a 10-block Westside stretch of Olympic Boulevard.

The design competition, to be announced today, is billed by sponsors as an unprecedented attempt to promote development while remaining sensitive to community concerns such as traffic, parking and aesthetics. Sponsors expect to receive more than 100 entries, which will be judged both by widely known professional architects and by neighborhood residents.

Streets, Sidewalks Too

The competition includes designs for public sidewalks and streets as well as two buildings on private parcels on West Olympic between the San Diego Freeway and Bundy Drive. The private properties are owned by co-sponsors of the competition, Executive Life Insurance Co. and Raleigh Enterprises. The two companies are partners in two other office buildings on the corridor.

This part of the West Olympic corridor--now lined mostly with low-rise commercial structures and “mid-rise” structures about 10 stories tall--is one of several commercial areas in the city where allowable density was cut in half by Proposition U, the 1985 growth-limit initiative co-authored by Braude.

Development there is still far below the Proposition U limit of 1.5 square feet of development for every square foot of land. More mid-rise structures are expected as growth moves away from Westwood and the Wilshire corridor, George Rosenthal, president of Raleigh Enterprises, said.

The competition represents both an experiment in urban planning and a peace treaty of sorts between some slow-growth activists and some developers.

“Inevitably, Los Angeles will grow,” Rosenthal said. “The interesting challenge is, how do you deal with growth and how do you enhance quality of existing occupants? . . .Hopefully, confrontation will be avoided.”

Braude said that the project is consistent with the “reasonable growth” that he favors for the city. He said he agreed to participate because “I prefer less paranoia and more cooperation on both sides. Citizens have asked for more participation and earlier participation . . . This is an additional protection . . . There are no guarantees, no promises, no commitments. There is only a willingness to explore.”

Called ‘Garden District’

Advertisements promoting the competition, which call the corridor “Olympic West--the Garden District,” will appear in several international architectural journals. Entries are expected to suggest landscaping layouts for public areas, possibly including furniture and lighting, as well as a master plan for the commercial development of the corridor, including suggestions of architectural style.

Architectural consultant Micheal John Pittas, retained as an adviser for the competition, said he knows of no other effort sponsored by private companies that “has used an open international design competition to either produce the architecture of buildings or the design of open space.”

Pittas, former design director for the National Endowment for the Arts, has previously helped to arrange competitions for the design of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, the unfinished Civic Center in West Hollywood and the renewal of Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. The West Hollywood competition attracted 300 entries from 25 nations, and Pershing Square drew 242 entries from 18 nations.

In the first stage of the competition, names of competitors are not known to judges. Up to five finalists will be selected to submit further renderings.

Rosenthal said the two companies expect to spend more than $300,000 on the competition, including about $50,000 in prize money. Braude’s participation is expected to help win city approval for whatever concepts are decided upon.

The winner would have the opportunity for commissions to design the two Raleigh-Executive Life projects, but will receive no guarantee, Rosenthal said. The professional jurors will be Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill; Richard Meier, Getty Center architect; landscape architect Regula Campbell; former San Francisco city planner Rai Okamoto; artist and designer James Wines, and John Dixon, editor of Progressive Architecture.

In addition to Braude and Rosenthal, other jurors will be Tom Donovan, a member of the Westside Residents Assn.; Jean Ushijima, president of the West Los Angeles Japanese American Citizens League; Dan Emmett, president of Douglas Emmett & Co., and Sid Yamazaki, assistant principal of University High Adult School.