In Part II of our end of year round up we asked our contributors to give us stream of conscious thoughts when we said the name "Jack Weiss". Quite literally they punched us in the mouth. As we lay bloodied on the floor, our girl-about-town contributor rose from her seat and in a defiant tone spoke the following soliloquy:
"I think one big thing is that after years of talking, residential Hollywood has a real shot this coming year--maybe even more so than downtown...I believe that now, with Palisades Development Group having just announced that it's developing the 1926 Equitable Building at Hollywood and Vine and turning it into lofts, all four corners (I could be wrong, it might just be three corners) of that historic intersection will soon have projects---that will actually get built and that people will live in! I know Kor is there, and I think the W Hotel is going in on a third corner....the nightlife is legendary, restaurants like the Hungry Cat are full, but I think these developers may actually get people to sleep in Hollywood! Another big trend, though not totally new, is infill lofts in areas where you'd used to have just horrible boxy condos...now even somewhat lame Marina Del Rey has new loft developments, and they are being built by the same companies that are responsible for horrible suburban sprawl developments of fake Meditteranean houses--they've "woken up and smelled the coffee" and see that people do want to live that way (in an urban, walkable environment in a wide open space). Also we've seen it in Culver City with the smaller-scale MODAA lofts (rendered above).
A final trend that is really happening more in NY but may be gaining some momentum here is the hotel-condo conversion, in which underperforming hotels are turned into condos...I think the first LA example is the St. Regis in Century City. It will be interesting to see if that works out."
We will be back for Part III in our discussion of Los Angeles development tomorrow. If you have comments, tips, or questions, feel free to share - la@curbed.com.