Los Angeles Has Mapped Every Building's Rent Control Status
Los Angeles's extreme housing shortage has nearly two-thirds of Angelenos paying way more than they can afford toward their rent. To try and increase access to information about the dwindling supply of rent-stabilized housing in the city, Mayor Eric Garcetti's announcedthat information about whether or not a building is rent-controlled will now be listed on the city's zoning and planning website, ZIMAS.
Vin Scully Might Get His Own Street By Dodger Stadium
The sweet, sweet voice of beloved, long-time Dodgers announcer Vin Scully has earned the man a star on the Walk of Fame, but it could also get a street near the stadium renamed for the sportscaster, who's heading into what's likely to be his final season giving the play-by-play. Eastsider LA says Councilmember Gil Cedillo's introduced a motion that would have Elysian Park Avenue renamed to Vin Scully Avenue.
Rent in Dallas, Baltimore, Des Moines: What $1,200/Month Can Get You Right Now
Welcome to Curbed Comparisons, a column that explores what one can rent for a set dollar amount in various cities across the U.S. Is one man's studio another man's townhouse? Let's find out! Today's price: $1,200/month.
↑ Des Moines, IA (2 beds, 2 bath)—Converted loft mania is a live in Des Moines! This 1000-square-foot pad comes with soaring ceilings, exposed ducts, and windows with skyline views. It's located in a historic building in the Court Avenue cultural district, which is close to attractions like the Science Center of Iowa and the Des Moines Farmers' Market.
This Year's Monster El Niño Is Making Everyone Want to Ski
Skiers and snowboarders head to the lifts on Friday, Jan. 8, 2016, after El Niño storms dropped more than 2 feet feet of snow in Big Bear Lake, Calif. (AP Photo/Christopher Weber)
Curbed Ski has been on the El Niño beat all winter, from explaining exactly what you need to know about this year's record-breaking El Niño to documenting each round of El Niño snow. But we've also had the pleasure of enjoying a whole lot of El Niño powder this season, and it looks like we're not alone. Across the west, El Niño-hype has everyone itchin' to get on the hill, and ski areas are enjoying one of the busiest winters they've seen in years.
Before & After: Downtown Los Angeles's Disappearing Hamburger Stands
With so many cranes in the air over Downtown, it's hard to ignore the neighborhood's big ongoing growth spurt. Parking lots are dropping like flies, replaced by mixed-users and hotels, as DTLA and all Los Angeles seem to be working to shed the car-centric ways of its past. But LA's car culture was linked to more than just four wheels; it influenced architecture like Googie (designed to be eye-catching and coerce drivers into stopping) and also roadside food stands. The Guardian recently took a look at how Downtown's transformation is leaving the burger stands behind, in some cases even causing their demise. We've picked out three examples of new developments that are replacing old food huts with shiny new housing, retail, and hotel space.
The Secret High-Society History of the Playboy Mansion
Photo by Jim Bartsch
A winding driveway curves its way through stately pine trees to the crest of a small hill where Statham House in all its Tudor magnificence—charcoal slate roof, copper rain gutters, huge golden oak doors, flanked by granite lions—stands as a present day anachronism in a world of glass and steel. Its almost six-acre park, with the only local grove of redwood trees, is abloom with flowers, particularly roses. Here, in some quiet privacy, some of Los Angeles' most distinguished visitors have found relaxation.
In 1919, Arthur Letts, the British-born merchandising magnate who owned Broadway Department Stores, bought 400 acres of the old Wolfskill Ranch in rural Los Angeles County. He named his new development Holmby Hills, after his childhood village of Holdenby. He hoped to create a neighborhood of rolling estates, where the burgeoning blue bloods of Southern California could ride horses and sip champagne in privileged peace—"a bit of England in America."
But Letts would never live in his very own Jane Austen-land. He turned development of the neighborhood over to his son-in-law, Harold Janss (who also developed tony Westwood). Letts died in 1923, leaving his vast holdings to his golf-mad son, Arthur Letts Jr. It was Junior who would finally build the English manor house befitting the aspirations of his homesick father.
LA City Council Bans Chewing Tobacco at Dodger Stadium
Get ready to see a lot of stressed out ballplayers in Dodger Stadium this season, but the additional nerves won't have anything to do with the hunt for a World Series ring. The sweaty brows and gnashing teeth out on the field can be blamed on the city of Los Angeles's new ban on chewing tobacco at the stadium. According to the LA Times, the LA City Council approved an ordinance today to ban smokeless tobacco from all sports venues in the city. Passed by a unanimous 14-0 vote, Councilmember Jose Huizar's ordinance to ban chewing tobacco at stadiums joins similar anti-tobacco ordinances passed by San Francisco and Boston last year. All three will take effect starting this spring, just in time for opening day.
Soho House Has Locked Down a Third LA Location in Malibu
Expensive members-only club Soho House has got one huge clubscheduled to open this year in Downtown LA's Arts District, in addition to its penthouse spot on the Sunset Strip, but it's already planning its next Los Angeles location across town, in Malibu. Our friends over at Eater LA spotted an ABC license for the old Nikita restaurant space that outs Soho House LLC as its new overseer. The 6,900-square-foot, wood-clad building was occupied by the Italian restaurant, backed by billionaire Larry Ellison (who owns over a dozen properties in Malibu), until its sudden shuttering in 2014.
Come Dive Into an 1877 Lithograph of a Young Los Angeles
Prominent fixture on the Los Angeles history scene Nathan Masters has a new show over at KCET, premiering tomorrow, that takes a good, hard look at the hidden, and in some cases literally paved-over, aspects of LA's past. Called Lost LA, the show's website indicates that it'll be delving into the backstory of the land where Dodger Stadium now stands (aka Chavez Ravine) and taking viewers through that most coveted of urban exploration tours: LA's abandoned subway tunnels. Curbed's received an exclusive clip of an episode that shows in condensed form the kind of in-depth look the series will take with all its subject matter. In this video, viewers see a lithograph map of the young city from 1877, learn about the key elements it displays (and what those are supposed to convey to a Nineteenth Century map reader), and track down the modern-times vantage point from which the map was drawn to survey today's much-changed view.
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Billboard Company Illegally Cut Down Billboard-Blocking Trees in Silver Lake
A 2011 view of the Sunset Triangle Plaza.
Silver Lake's polka-dotted Sunset Triangle Plaza just got a little less shady, and that's not good news. The trees growing on the little grassy section of the plaza have been vandalized, says the LA Times—the victims of a chop job done without any of the required permits by a crew hired by Outfront Media, a company that has a billboard to the west of the park. "These trees were trimmed to make the billboard visible, and that was the only consideration that was made," says Councilmember Mitch O'Farrell, who reps the area. Locals are livid that their once well-shaded neighborhood park has been on the receiving end of this "hatchet job."
The Median Price For Housing in Echo Park is Now $813,000
Now that Silver Lake's transformation into a hip, upperclass neighborhood is complete, homebuyers are apparently headed east, snatching up properties in the transforming-before-our-very-eyesneighborhood of Echo Park, according to Redfin's December 2015 housing report. Median prices for housing in Echo Park continued to rise last month, and were up 25.3 percent over the year before, to $813,000. That's also an increase of $77,100 since only September 2015, and is more than $282,000 more than Echo Park's median price in 2014. The overall number of sales in the neighborhood is up 40 percent too. For the love of pete, if you want a hip, happenin' home in Echo Park, better do it now, or five years ago.
LA's Harbor Gateway is Close to Getting Its First Park and It's on a Superfund Site
An 8.5-acre, possibly still-horribly-contaminated site in Los Angeles's slim Harbor Gateway neighborhood is getting closer to becoming the area's first park. The big empty lot is, at the surface, a great space for a park—large, flat—but there's still a lot of work to be done to make sure that it's actually safe, say those at work to make the much-needed park a reality, reports the Daily Breeze. The park would be pretty much next door to not one but two federal Superfund sites, and on a parcel where homes were demolished because the soil around them was so tainted.
The Sierra Club is Suing to Stop U2's The Edge From Building His Five Malibu Mansions
After a hard couple months on tour, what's a rock star supposed to do with their free time? All that adrenaline normally channeled toward playing a two-night stand at a sold-out Wembley Stadium has to come out somewhere. Fortunately for U2's The Edge, he has a six-year long solo project in Malibu that's been keeping him quite busy. This side project won't result in a new adult contemporary album boasting disappointing sales figures, however, just reams and reams of legal documents concerning a housing development that will not die. In December, after years of wrangling, it looked like The Edge had finally gotten the green light to build five mansions on a pristine Malibu bluff when the California Coastal Commission gave its ok. But now, the Sierra Club is taking its turn as the latest opponent to The Edge's Malibu housing plans—according to the LA Times, the Sierra Club has filed a lawsuit against the Commission to nullify their approval of the project.
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