[Photo by Gary Leonard, LA Downtown News]
One goes up, the other comes down (sorta).
The editors at the LA Downtown News alert us to two stories in this week's issue on downtown development. The first breaks the story on a 31-story condo tower going up at Grand and Cesar Chavez on the site of what is today a Burger King (owned by the developers). The two brothers who are developing the project, Larry and Ralph Cimmarusti, are now in the entitlement phase for a 200 unit condominiums with 16,000 square feet of ground floor retail. Far be it for us to disparage downtown development, but we've never really understood why people would want to live adjacent to the intersection of 3 different freeways. Easy access vs. cancer cluster. You decide.
·The New Italian Job [LA Downtown News]
And not far away, the Axis condo project near Union Station has metaphorically crumbled. Buyers who were expecting to move in this summer received offers to pull out of the project and receive a full refund on their down payment, with an additional $8,500 - developer Standard Pacific's way of saying "sorry, we fucked up big time." Apparently, Standard Pacific found it a teensy bit more difficult than they anticipated it would be to acquire title on the complex. Oops. The sales office is now closed, someone might want to tell them to update their web site.
·The New Italian Job [LA Downtown News]
Axis Put on Hold [LA Downtown News]