Bradley Tells Trump His Skyscraper Plan for L.A. Is ‘Bad Idea’

Mayor Tom Bradley has told flamboyant billionaire Donald Trump that it would be “generally a bad idea” to build possibly the nation’s tallest building at the historic site of the Ambassador Hotel, a Bradley spokesman said Friday.

Bill Chandler, the mayor’s press secretary, said Bradley has told Trump that plans for a 125-story complex on the hotel site, which covers nearly 24 acres, would not be compatible with the surrounding mid-Wilshire area.

“You can build that kind of thing in downtown Los Angeles where the skyline is quite different, but if you’re talking about mid-Wilshire where the neighborhood around it simply would be overwhelmed by a building of that height, I don’t think that it is appropriate,” Bradley said at the end of a news conference Friday on an unrelated subject.

The conversation between the billionaire and the mayor preceded a letter Bradley sent to Trump on Friday which made no mention of the mayor’s opposition to the planned skyscraper. Instead, Bradley urged Trump to ensure that the project is environmentally sound.

“Here in Los Angeles, we take seriously the need for development that is sensitive to the environment and to the principles of good neighborhood planning,” Bradley wrote to Trump.

The $1-billion-plus development would be the first project on the West Coast for Trump, the brash 43-year-old financier who has amassed a fortune investing in real estate and skyscrapers in New York.

Trump announced his plans a week ago for the Ambassador site, one of the last large open spaces left in urban Los Angeles that is available for large-scale development. Bradley attended the news conference at which the announcement was made and did not raise any objections to Trump’s plans at the time.

Bradley advised Trump in his letter that any proposed development for the Ambassador site must provide neighborhood groups and concerned citizens with input in the planning process and create economic opportunities throughout the city.

The plans also “must recognize that our children are a high priority in Los Angeles, and we must consider the community’s need for additional schools,” Bradley wrote.

The Ambassador is being considered by education officials as a possible site for a 2,000-student high school.

Bradley reminded Trump of the need for developers to spread new economic growth to areas in the city that have not reaped such benefits in the past.

“For example, those who want to build major developments downtown should also consider financing industrial parks in Pacoima,” Bradley wrote. “Developers who want to build shopping centers on the Westside of Los Angeles should also contemplate efforts to enhance shopping opportunities on the Eastside. And developers who want to build condominiums should also consider ways to stimulate the construction of affordable housing in South-Central Los Angeles.”

The 69-year-old Ambassador Hotel, which closed last year after decades of decline, gained notoriety in 1968 as the site of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Trump acquired an interest in Wilshire Center Partners, a consortium of British and Irish developers and S. D. Malkin Properties of New York, which purchased the hotel and its surrounding site last summer for $64 million. It is believed that he paid more than $12 million for a 20% interest in the property. The partnership has been renamed Trump Wilshire Associates, with Trump as the managing partner.

Trump said at his news conference last week that the development probably would include a combination of apartments, condominiums, a hotel, offices, retail shops and a large ballroom known as the Cocoanut Grove, named after the Ambassador’s nightclub that was popular in the 1920s through 1940s.