Right next to developer Monarch's planned Brea and Santa Monica project is 7141 Santa Monica Blvd, site of a mixed-use project that was first submitted to the West Hollywood back in 2006, but which is now MIA. "It's in the hands of the developer and we haven't heard anything," Francisco Contreras, city planner at West Hollywood tells us. Numerous sources say the project (the developer is listed as Formosa Partners, an LP that is affiliated with Houston-based Hanover Co) is on hold. The interesting twist: The project would have taken out one of architect Frank Gehry's first works, a building he designed back in 1964. Here's what Gehry wrote in an email to us about the project this morning: "This is the Faith Plating Building. It preceded the Danziger building which is on the corner of Sycamore and Melrose. The Faith Plating was done for William Kerman and we helped him reorganize it – it’s a bumper plating shop. They did chrome plating of car bumpers. We did the façade, which is still there, and a lot of the reorganization of the factory inside and the offices inside. But I haven’t been inside in years." And here's a 2003 Los Angeles Times article talking about the building: "In both Danziger and Faith Plating, Gehry has said he was playing with the "dumb box," as he called it, the stucco-and-plaster cube that makes up much of the city's landscape." The building may not be worth any preservation battles, but we're sort of curious to see what the inside looks like.
· Formosa Project (it's referenced as the Formosa project) [West Hollywood Planning Dept]
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