Plaza Project’s Sculpted Tower Would Give L.A. Skyline Flair
The proposed design of the Grand Avenue Plaza development downtown by Pacific Atlas Development is as distinctive as it is controversial.
Encompassing a city block bounded by Seventh, Eighth and Olive streets, and Grand Avenue, the design attempts to meld a variety of uses in a variety of styles in three stages of development.
One of the uses involves the demolition of two buildings of historic interest on Seventh Street, a proposal that is opposed by preservationists and has delayed the necessary approvals by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.
The most clearly defined elements in the design at present are the proposed office tower, at the northeast corner of Grand and Eighth, and a mid-block landscaped plaza, which together compose the development’s first stage.
Mid-Block Garden Planned
The tower, as revealed in plans and renderings, is to be a 34-story structure clad in a blue-green reflective glass curtain wall that wraps around the building. This illusion of enfolded walls is accented on the south facade by a four-story setback cut into the upper stories.
Designed by Richard Keating of the local office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the tower is very much a signature structure in a slick, sculpted late Modernist style. In this respect it is similar in spirit to some of the office buildings that the architect designed when practicing in Dallas and Houston, and that mark the skylines there.
As such, the Grand Avenue Plaza tower promises to attract attention and lend an architectural flair to the changing downtown Los Angeles skyline. Another boxy, boring building in the severe International style it is not.
Promising to be equally distinctive is the proposed mid-block garden plaza, designed by the landscape architectural firms of Michael Van Valkenburgh & Assoc. and Emmet Wemple & Assoc. The plan generally is what is called a soft design, emphasizing a diversity of plantings and a minimum of furnishings. A free-standing restaurant edges Grand Avenue. Particularly engaging is a suggested thick bamboo grove, on the site where another office tower is proposed in a distant third stage of the development.
The controversy concerning the project centers on the Seventh Street frontage, and the existing Brockman and Coulter building shells, built in 1912 and 1917, respectively. The second stage of the Pacific Atlas proposal calls for a 500-room luxury hotel on the site.
Historic Strip
The 13-story Renaissance Revival styled Brockman building, with its ornate terra cotta cornice and detailing, and the more modest four story Coulter Building, distinguished by a curved corner bay, together hint of a time when Seventh Street was a prime retail district. Though neither of the structures individually is of landmark quality, their massing, scale and detailing do work in concert with other dated buildings along the street, forming a unique historic strip. A walk there is a featured tour titled “Seventh Street: Mecca for Merchants,” conducted by the Los Angeles Conservancy.
Studies have indicated that despite their ages and structural problems it is possible to recycle the Brockman and Coulter buildings as a hotel, a position being urged by the Conservancy.
However, the effort would entail costly construction problems Pacific Atlas clearly prefers to avoid. As an alternative, it has proposed a new hotel be designed in the spirit of the old buildings, respecting the street’s 150-foot cornice height limit and reflecting the massing, texture and tone of the neighboring historic structures. In addition, the ground floor would be lined with retail shops to help animate the sidewalk.
Pacific Atlas said the new hotel has not yet been designed, but it did show a rendering of what the Seventh Street facade might look like. The rendering, though somewhat out of scale and sketchily detailed, hinted at a sympathetically massed and warmly faced and detailed structure. Renderings do tend to present idealized scenes.
