New Urban Development in Los Angeles

[jlrobe]

One of several ongoing projects downtown to turn downtown los angeles into a thriving urban hub. Let's see if they can pull it. Below is a link to the new ritz carlton complex.

http://www.dexigner.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6622

[UrbanAtl]

I hope that more people add updates and pictures of planned LA projects. I'm just visiting from the ATL and wanted to see what's rising in yo hoods. I like the Ritz tower. I hope that LA gets more towers b/c you're not stuck with our Eastcoast traditional dialogue. LA can really venture out and start a new archetectual conversation. New towers up and down the east from New York to Atlanta often fall back to the old-school age of the skyscraper. In this day and age it just comes of fake and EPCOT like. We could all really use something new. Anyone breaking new grounds? Anywhere? (& yes, Dubai is great!)

[davidals]

A small, but very cool L.A. project...this news came from a cinema listserv I'm on - I would be shocked if the old design elements aren't preserved or incorporated into the new theatre:

The long-defunct Linda Lea Theatre has been demolished to make way for a new downtown Los Angeles theatre dedicated to Asian cinema. The Linda Lea, known for the kimono-figure on its marquis and billboard and a moderne Japanese aesthetic, was in its heyday the place to see Japanese film in the Los Angeles area. It opened in the late 1940s--soon after the return of many Japanese-Americans from the internment camps of the WWII era--and was the best place to see Toei yakuza films and melodramas. Toei posters were discovered as demolition took place, along with signs in Japanese, fliers in Tagalog, and what was presumably a Toei crest above the hall.

The site will become home to a new cinema dedicated to first-run East Asian and South Asian film. New York-based ImaginAsian (owners of a 24 hr cable network and cinema in NYC) will operate the cinema under the name ImaginAsian Center. It will open in September in a modern structure. The new theatre is part of the unrelenting gentrification of LA's downtown. On South Main Street, it's very close to Little Tokyo and not far from Chinatown.

[Cmuse]

Here's a good Web site for keeping up with projects and urban issues in L.A. It's updated daily:

http://la.curbed.com/

A recent post on that site deals with a critique of New Urbanist development (and transportation mismanagement) that just ran as the cover story in "The LA Weekly."

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2007/06/la_weeklys_big.php