Construction Spending in LA Could Hit $7 Billion by the End of the Year
Just looking at the list of 28 projects of condos, hotels, retail, and mixtures of the three springing up in South Park, it's easy to see how spending on construction in LA (that includes remodels and new construction alike) is on track to hit $7 billion by the fiscal year's end—a three-decade high, the Department of Building and Safety tells KPCC. "This is definitely the biggest construction boom since the 80sthat I've witnessed, and it's yet to be seen if it's the biggest boom in our history or not," says LADBS spokesman Luke Zamperini.
This is What 3,500 Cute Kids Cleaning Up Dockweiler State Beach Looks Like
- Photo by Jesse Kaplan
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Dockweiler State Beach usually gets high scores on those Heal the Bay clean-beach report cards, and doing their part to help keep it tidy this year are the thousands of kids who were bused to the beach to pick up trash. Almost 3,500 children from 30 schools across the LA area participated in the 22nd annual Kids Ocean Day, according to a release for the event. It's hoped that by getting these proto-adults to touch soggy cigarette butts and plastic wrappers, they'll learn a lasting, first-hand lesson about how important it is to take care of the ocean. Also, after the tough cleaning is done, the kids mobilize to create a huge, human art piece visible only from the sky; this year's design was an elaborate fish motif designed by a fifth-grader, says the Daily News. Work hard, play hard, children.
Polished 1956 Post and Beam in Laurel Canyon Asking $879k
Thanks to rampant skylights and clerestory windows, a person could probably get a tan from all the natural light inside this 1956 post and beam. Located on a winding street off Laurel Canyon Boulevard, the two-bedroom, one-bathroom house is a modest 1,118-square-feet but looks much bigger, and boasts bamboo floors, a farmhouse sink in the kitchen, and a tankless water heater. A hefty piece of the nearly 6,000-square-foot lot has been transformed into a multi-level backyard deck, and landscaped with drought-tolerant plants. Last sold in 2010 (when it was significantly less fabulous) for $658,000, it's now asking$879,000.
First Look at Marina del Rey's Fisherman's Village, Post-Swanky Overhaul
Marina Del Rey's kitschy Fisherman's Village has been awaiting a complete redevelopment for years, and we're now seeing what the future might hold for it (if the county doesn't demolish it first). Renderings from Studio One Eleven (a division of P+R Architects) paint a clear picture of how the Village's leaseholders/developers Gold Coast Village LLC want to turn the waterfront attraction into a more upscale draw. The post-redevelopment Village would blend right in in Playa Vista.
How Great is Kickstarter at Remaking the Urban Landscape?
The ability of Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites to turn crazy design concepts into real-world products has been well documented, but a post at PSFK suggests the site's ability to support speculative building projects is also commendable. The article touches on three campaigns: the +Pool in New York, a fully funded plan to place a floating and filtering pool in the East River; the Thames Baths Lido, a now-active proposal to launch a public pool in the Thames River in London; and the PopUP Forest, set to be installed in Times Square next summer. They all sound like great ideas, but does the promise of crowdfunded public works live up to the reality?
Big, Rainbowy Mixed User Coming to Sixth/Virgil in Koreatown
Eastern Koreatown is getting a new 398-unit complex with 20,000 square feet of retail space at the ground level. The apartments, from developer Century West Partners, are under construction now at the southeast corner of Sixth Street and Virgil, just next to the Lafayette Recreation Center, says Urbanize LA. Currently a dusty, half-hearted parking lot, the parcel is one of many, many underutilized lots that stands to be gobbled up by Koreatown's building boom.
Racing Fans Fighting to Keep Irwindale Speedway From Becoming an Outlet Mall
The days of the Irwindale Speedway (aka the Irwindale Event Center) have been numbered since it was sold in 2013 to developers Lindom Company, but their intentions to demolish the racetrack, and redevelop the 63-acre property into an outlet mall are being challenged now by residents and racing fans who are fighting to keep the site intact. Mostly, the Daily News says, Speedway supporters are hoping that preserving one of the few racetracks in the area with a drag strip could help mitigate illegal street racing.
Looking Back at the Glory Days of "LA's Most Extreme Entertainment Venue"
Before it became a Korean Christian church, the Grand Olympic Auditorium was once "LA's most extreme entertainment venue," presenting wrestling, boxing, roller derby, and punk shows to an eclectic audience of grandmas, punks, mobsters, artists, and pretty much anyone looking for a some excitement. Seeking to preserve the divey, fun history of the place is the Olympic Auditorium Project (via on LAist), which is raising funds through Kickstarter to make a documentary about the venue originally built in 1924 and used for the 1932 Olympics.
Stunning But Douchified Mid-Century Modern in Sherman Oaks Asking $4.2M
We hardly recognized this Sherman Oaks residence by Modernist architect and long-time architecture instructor Bernard Zimmerman. Since it went up for sale back in 2012, it's been thoroughly redone—the owners have removed most of the weird white tiles everywhere (even the bedrooms) and put in multi-toned, presumably reclaimed wood, a bathtub in the master bedroom that resembles the white of half of a hardboiled egg, and made the floating staircase even more terrifying.
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Tiny Little Luxury Building Cropping Up in the Middle of Westwood's Condo Canyon
The alley of condo towers that runs along Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood is set to welcome a very short new addition to the ranks. Construction is now underway on a seven-story complex of 56 luxury residences—so luxurious that they'll have 150 parking spaces to split among them, according to Urbanize LA. Designs for the project come from GMP Architects, whose site says that the complex will feature a motor court under the building and include a lounge with a fireplace, mahogany paneling, and a private wine cellar. On the roof, there'll be a deck with a barbecue and firepit, so residents can have a steak and warm themselves as they gaze up at the neighboring towers. There's also talk of an on-site salon and mediation garden.
Here's the New Look Coming to LAX's United Airlines Terminal
The modernization of LAX has been just tearing through the airport in the last couple years—Terminal 6 and the first phase of the Tom Bradley International makeover are done, and Terminals 1, 2, and 5 are all in the works—and ground broke yesterday on Terminal 7, the United Airlines terminal. The $573-million overhaul "will refresh virtually all of [the] customer-facing space," adding a new ticketing lobby with self-tagging baggage kiosks (ooh), improving the security checkpoint, creating a new United Club lounge with outdoor terrace overlooking the airfield (fit for double selfies, apparently), and overall just making everything more "relaxed and inviting." The gate areas will get "a variety of comfortable seating options and abundant charging stations for customers' electronic devices." The work is expected to be finished in December 2017.
All the Details on Los Angeles's Plan to Legalize Backyard Bees
Los Angeles's fight to legalize backyard beekeeping has lasted years but may now be coming to a successful end. The City Planning Commission has just approved an ordinance that would allow apiaries in places that are zoned for single-family residential use. According to a release from the Planning Department, the decline of the general bee population was a big factor in the decision to legalize bees, but it probably also helped that lots of other large cities (like San Francisco and New York) already allow people to keep bees in their yards, and that urban agriculture has become increasingly popular across the city. This ordinance isn't a free-for-all, though; there would be restrictions about how many hives can be on a lot and precise specifications about their placement.
According to Ikea, People Are Pretty Stressed About Kitchens
[Image via Shutterstock]
IKEA's second global Life at Home Report came out yesterday. It's not as salacious as the first one, which revealed that people in Mumbai have the most morning sex and people in New York do the most work while sitting on the toilet, instead focusing on the kitchen. Specifically, the fact that everyone is very anxious about their kitchens, apparently. For instance, 19 percent of Parisians chose the answer "I would feel uncomfortable or ashamed" when presented with the question, "How would you feel if a friend looked in your kitchen?" (A friend!) And while 38 percent of Berlin residents cook at home during the week, 54 percent never eat in the kitchen or dining room. On the bright side, only 18 percent of them feel bad about the amount of food they throw away each week, the lowest of any of the eight cities surveyed.
This Is the Most Stereotypically Los Angeles Thing That Has Ever Happened
Hippie cults, former child actors, and a police sting for selling kombucha all sound like punchlines for jokes about Los Angeles that got cut from Annie Hall, but all of those things are real, true elements in this real true story of what happened at a fundraiser organized by the new age religion founded by 10 Things I Hate About You/Seventh Heavenactor Andrew Keegan, which was ruined by an Alcoholic Beverage Control bust, according to the Argonaut. Of course this happened in Venice.
The incident occurred at Full Circle, the "open source spiritual community center" founded by Keegan on super-trendy Rose Avenue. During a fundraiser for a marine conservation nonprofit called the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, undercover ABC agents confiscated "several containers" of kombucha, a bubbly fermented tea made from a gross mushroom that is known to contain a very small percentage of alcohol, and cited the spiritual group for selling booze without a license. It would have been amazing to hear some details about how the ABC agents went "undercover" in this scenario—did they take their shoes off? Were they wearing sustainable yoga pants? Sadly, we may never know what an ABC officer thinks a hippie looks like.
Six Not-Too-Awkward Airbnbs That Are Probably Still Legal After Santa Monica's Big Crackdown
This week, Santa Monica came down hard on short-term rentals, completely banning the practice of renting out entire apartments or houses on sites like Airbnb, and requiring anyone renting out individual rooms in their homes register with the city. The new set of rules will remove the overwhelming majority of short-term rental listings across all vacation rental sites—a report from earlier this year found that 70 percent of the city's Airbnb listings were for full units—but there are still some cool, not-totally-awkward options left. We've picked out a handful of the best listings that will likely still be legal after the full-unit crackdown takes effect:
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