A Towering Achievement Is in the Works Downtown
The sky’s apparently the limit for those hoping to construct a 1,100-foot-tall tower featuring a giant sword-wielding angel on a hillside next to downtown Los Angeles.
Backers of the “City of Angels Monument” say that they also plan to build a small network of hotels, movie theaters, offices and shops around the tower as part of what they say will be a $3.55-billion development.
Details of the proposed project next to the Harbor Freeway were disclosed as planners announced that they have secured financing and signed deals to purchase the land needed for the tower and for the first phase of commercial development.
When the tower proposal was unveiled in January, it was dismissed by many in the commercial real estate business as a pie-in-the-sky idea. Skeptics still doubt that the fanciful tower will ever get off the ground.
But there is agreement that it will dominate the downtown landscape if it is constructed.
“It’s not if it’s built, it’s when it’s built,” the tower’s designer, artist Brett-Livingstone Strong, said as he outlined details of the development plan he said he has spent five years conceiving.
Once city development permits are obtained, tower construction could begin late next year and be finished in 2005, Strong said. Commercial development of “Angel City” around the tower would be completed about three years after that, he said.
Strong said visitors would be charged $25 each to enter the tower. It would contain such features as museums for the television, radio, movie and recording industries, art galleries, cafes and nightclubs, as well as observation decks. An 8,000-seat concert hall would be housed below ground in its base, he said.
Strong, a 45-year-old Australia-born sculptor who lives in Pacific Palisades, heads the City of Angels Monument Corp. Until now, perhaps his most famous work has been a statue of actor John Wayne that he jack-hammered from a 12-ton boulder that fell two decades ago onto Malibu’s Pacific Coast Highway.
For the tower, Strong envisions a 750-foot structure topped by a 350-foot bronze angel. It would be a monument to arts and entertainment that would become to Los Angeles what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris, he said.
The tower would be 116 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. Its angel would be more than twice the size of the torch-bearing figure atop New York’s Statue of Liberty.
Plans call for Angel City to eventually cover about 85 acres. The site would be bounded roughly by 1st Street on the north, the Harbor Freeway on the east, 3rd Street on the south and Loma Avenue to the west. For the first phase of development, Strong said his corporation is in escrow to buy 55 acres in the vicinity of 3rd and Bixel streets. The $128-million cost is being covered by a New Hampshire-based investment firm, he said.
The Pacific Stock Exchange building and an existing high-rise office building at 3rd Street and Beaudry Avenue--both targeted for redesign--are among the properties being purchased. Individual escrows will begin closing in two weeks, said David Thind, vice president of WestMac, a Los Angeles commercial brokerage firm involved with the acquisitions.
On Wednesday, representatives of firms owning key parcels in the project area confirmed they are selling their land to the corporation, although they declined to discuss prices. Terry Lee of Cathay City Development said his company is selling eight acres that will be directly beneath the tower. A local title company confirmed that the stock exchange and the Beaudry high-rise are in escrow.
Construction of the tower and surrounding buildings will be financed through a combination of investors, including the Bank of New York, said Gary Clayman, a West Los Angeles investment banker involved in the financing.
Bank of New York officials, who signed on with Strong nine months ago, declined Wednesday to discuss specifics of their financing agreement. “We never comment on client relations,” said bank spokesman Cary Giacalone from New York.
John Halle, president of Manchester, N.H.-based CNB Capital, said Wednesday that his firm so far has provided $33.8 million for land acquisition. He expects to finance an additional $150 million as more of the 220 individual parcels needed for Angel City are purchased.
Development plans prepared for Strong by the Santa Monica architectural firm Gensler call for a Gothic look for the four hotels and other commercial buildings scattered around Angel City. A 36-floor addition would be added to the Pacific Stock Exchange building and a Gothic-like facade attached to the 3rd and Beaudry building.
“I’m inspired by Gothic architecture. I may not please everybody, but I love Gothic architecture--what can I say?” said Strong. “I’ve designed an architectural attraction. There is nothing else in the world like this.”
Timothy Lappen, a Century City lawyer assisting Strong, said negotiations are continuing with additional property owners, including the city’s Department of Water and Power. That agency owns a 2nd Street equipment storage yard that Strong would like to use for a parking structure topped by an enclosed shopping mall.
Lappen said 65 acres of open space is included in the overall design, making the development less dense than is allowable by the city under existing zoning. He said the 1,100-foot tower will be designed to be seismically safe and predicted its height will pose no problem when city officials review construction plans.
Project backers have already begun lining up political support.
City Councilman Mike Hernandez, whose district includes the project site, has welcomed the project with a council resolution. Mayor Richard Riordan has issued one of his own.
The huge angel atop the tower will rotate each 36 hours to help stabilize the structure in wind, Strong said. The angel’s face will be a composite of the faces of a dozen Los Angeles women from different nationalities, he said.
Strong said he intends to finance a feasibility study for a “magnetic-levitation” monorail system that could eventually link his project with such downtown sites as the Music Center, Little Tokyo, Dodger Stadium, the Staples Arena, the Coliseum and Los Angeles International Airport.
But launching an elevated transit line may be just as hard as raising his tower.
“My biggest worry is how will traffic in downtown be affected by Angel City,” Strong said. “How are we going to get the tourists here?”
Maybe he needs to be touched by an angel.
