Luxury High-Rise Hotel, Office Planned for Downtown L.A.

by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

How do you … design a sustainable, two-tower complex that can be an iconic centerpiece and help revitalize an existing urban nucleus?

Summary: Los-Angeles based A.C. Martin Partners has designed a 40-story luxury hotel and 60-story LEED™ Gold certified office tower for downtown Los Angeles. The two-tower, billion-dollar redevelopment project would be built in the city’s financial district at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Figueroa Street, a few blocks from the Staples Center and the new mixed-use L.A. Live entertainment complex. Once built, the two towers, it is hoped, will revitalize the economy of downtown Los Angeles and become iconic landmarks. A.C. Martin Partners’ client Korean Air worked with Thomas Properties Group, Inc., to develop the plan for the nearly three-acre site. Development is pending on the marketplace and a public review process.

The plan including the 700-room hotel topped by several floors of condominiums envisions glass and terra cotta towers connected with retail, plazas, and open space. The office tower would seek LEED Gold certification. The entire development, which encompasses 1,750,000 square feet, would replace the existing Wilshire Grand Hotel, owned by Korean Air, and an office building.

Wilshire redevelopment
“The project has received interesting attention, a sign of optimism in difficult times,” says David Martin, FAIA, design principal, co-chairman at A.C. Martin Partners. Martin says that the design came about from a series of studies over time with Korean Air and Thomas Properties. “LA Live is a very powerful force in the city right now, and the Wilshire project would relate to it. In this economy we want to make the measurement of: ‘Do these buildings make sense?’ But right now the energy is to get the entitlements, and then make the decision related to how the marketplace goes.”

Three objectives needed to be achieved during the study, Martin says. “First, make the project functional and efficient, plus match a marketplace in terms of the dimensions and geometry. The second is that the office building be LEED Gold. Third, we wanted it to be exemplary—a marvelous urban space—at street level with the community. If it were to become iconic, that would be okay, but we would want it to become iconic by achieving those other objectives.” In addition, the development would be located near a subway portal.

Urban space where the sun shines
Martin says that the design calls for the tower to be lightweight, since they would be in a high seismic zone in L.A. The plan also calls for rotating the office tower closer to the north-south axis on the site so it would use much less energy due to sun orientation. “That started to tell us about the form of the tower,” Martin says. “When we tried to understand where the open space should be, we thought it needed to be in the sunny side of the building. This caused us to move the hotel in a certain direction. And we wanted it to have good views. All those maneuvers formed and shaped the building. It wasn’t the other way around, where we just started dreaming up shapes.”

In addition to being oriented towards the sun, the office tower would have operable windows, and on the south side there would be overhangs for sunshades and photovoltaics. “The geometry of the development evolved out of all these tweaks to make it fit well into the environment,” says Martin. “It is an interesting geometry for the Los Angeles skyline. I think it will be a nice addition to the city.”

"This exciting and bold new project is a major step forward in our efforts to add green, multi-use developments to the center of our city," Mayor Villaraigosa says. “Standing just a few blocks from Staples Center and L.A. Live, the Wilshire Grand redevelopment effort will help revitalize downtown, and we look forward to seeing this proposal proceed through the public review process and produce a new landmark that benefits Los Angeles, the community, and the local economy."

The project is in the beginning stage of entitlement, which could take 18 months. If the market is on the upswing, construction could happen one year after that.