CORRECTED: L.A. touts $1.8 billion Gehry downtown development

(Please read in second paragraph … steel-clad … instead
of … titanium-clad …)

A corrected repetition follows.

By Mary Milliken

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Determined to make downtown Los
Angeles more than a just a place to work, the city unveiled on
Monday a $1.8 billion real estate development designed by
renowned architect Frank Gehry.

Across the street from Gehry’s steel-clad Walt Disney
Concert Hall, the city together with Los Angeles County and
private investors will break ground in early 2007 on Grand
Avenue, the biggest project yet in the downtown’s renewal.

“Downtown is developing a core,” Los Angeles Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa said at the unveiling under the vaulted ceiling of
Gehry’s concert hall. “There is a real coming together of this
city and you are going to see more.”

The downtown for the 15 million people living in the
greater Los Angeles area turns into a ghost town after 5 p.m..
But the project aims to keep people in the city by creating a
luxury hotel, high-end and affordable housing, a retail area
for shops and restaurants and a civic park.

The development is expected to generate more than 5,000
direct and indirect jobs and $565 million in business revenue
annually and draw 5,400 new residents.

The city and county chose The Related Companies, developer
of New York City’s $2 billion Time Warner Center, to undertake
the first phase of the project, budgeted at $750 million.

It will include a 50-story tower and outdoor spaces and
walkways meant to give people an area to meet and take
advantage of the good weather of Southern California.

“We want that center, we yearn for it, we need it,” said
Gehry, a Canadian who moved to Los Angeles in 1947. “It
shouldn’t look like New York or Paris, it should look like us.”

Gehry is famous for designing the Guggenheim Museum that
spearheaded the renewal of Bilbao, Spain, and the sister Walt
Disney Concert Hall. But he will not use the metal that
characterizes those two buildings.

“We are taking that body language, carrying it across the
street and using that scale to start to create a village
character,” Gehry said.

“We hope that will spread into the other sites and become a
walking neighborhood, a place that is open and accessible from
all parts of the city so it is not just a fancy enclave.”