There's so much expensive development underway in South Park that some of it seems to have slipped into neighboring Pico-Union, just west of Downtown but with wildly different—poor and Latino—demographics. Developers CK Hospitality are planning a five-story, 149-room hotel with 8,600 square feet of street-level restaurant space, an outdoor pool deck, and a 113-car underground garage just down Olympic Boulevard from the Times Square of Los Angeles, LA Live, according to Building Los Angeles. The new hotel will be just a half mile away, but this is the first big development in the area to be built west of the 110 Freeway since LA Live opened.
The underground garage is significant since many new developments prefer to relegate all their parking to a cheaper parking podium beneath or beside the main building. Still, it's hard to know whether the new hotel will be a good thing for long-neglected Pico-Union, or the first sign of a wave of gentrification that could radically alter the neighborhood, which is 85 percent Latino and has a median income of $26,424, according to the LA Times mapping project, as well as a historic and desirable housing stock.
The intense gentrification of Downtown over the past decade has just recently started seeping into adjacent neighborhoods, including Boyle Heights, Historic South-Central, and Westlake/MacArthur Park.
· Renderings Revealed for Pico Union Hotel Development [Building LA]
· LA Begging For 4,000 New Hotel Rooms Around LA Live [Curbed LA]
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