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

Posted on: Tuesday, 25 April 2006, 13:12 CDT

(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."

Source: REUTERS

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