Hotel-Office Complex Set for Little Tokyo : Real estate: A Japanese consortium will build the $250-million project. It is the largest development proposed in the area in 20 years.
Japan’s largest airline and two Japanese developers will build a $250-million hotel, condominium, office and retail complex that would be the largest single development in the Little Tokyo area of downtown Los Angeles, they announced Thursday.
All Nippon Airways, through its real estate and hotel subsidiaries, and two Japanese developers agreed to build the 1.6-million-square-foot complex with 550 hotel rooms and 134 condominiums on a half-block parcel south of Second Street between Los Angeles and San Pedro streets.
The City Light Plaza complex is the largest project that the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency has attracted to Little Tokyo since it targeted the seven-block area for revitalization two decades ago.
“This development meets all the requirements we have in Little Tokyo for revitalizing this community,” said Gloria Uchida, CRA’s Little Tokyo project manager.
ANA, the world’s ninth-largest airline, will develop the 24-story hotel as a flagship for its expanding U.S. lodging operations. Within the last year, the company has bought the San Francisco Meridien Hotel and the Washington, D.C., Westin Hotel. ANA also owns the Sheraton Makaha Resort and Country Club in Hawaii and has agreed to manage a Miami hotel. It also is developing a hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Preliminary designs, by the St. Louis architectural firm Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, call for the hotel to include a Japanese restaurant, coffee shop, cocktail lounges, a Japanese-American museum, fitness club, tennis court and rooftop swimming pool.
A 124,000-square-foot retail portion will house shops, restaurants, an art gallery and a community center on four floors. One- and two-bedroom condominiums will occupy a 31-floor tower, and underground parking will accommodate 1,575 cars.
ANA’s partners are a subsidiary of the Toda Corp., a Tokyo conglomerate, and Ken Co., a Tokyo-based developer that is also involved with projects in Newport Beach, Corona and Costa Mesa. ANA will hold a 54% ownership in the hotel and a 10% stake in the retail, office and condominium space.
Although the developers have designed the complex for both American and Japanese clients, it likely will attract a predominantly Asian patronage, said Yukuo Takenaka, a Los Angeles investment banker. He expects the hotel to rely heavily on its airline customers.
“If any other operator came in and tried to bring in a major hotel, I would have some concern,” he said. “But because of ANA’s chances of bringing people in with its airline, I see it has a good chance of succeeding.”
Groundbreaking is scheduled for next summer, with a planned completion in late 1993.
City Light Plaza will surpass Little Tokyo’s New Otani Hotel & Garden as the community’s largest development. Completed in 1977 at a cost of $30 million, New Otani houses 448 rooms and 20,000 square feet of retail space. The largest retail building, the Japanese Village Plaza, has 73,500 square feet.
