Tall new residential towers are getting downright common in Downtown LA's most popular neighborhoods, like South Park or the Financial District, even the Historic Core, but now they're spreading somewhere new and unexpected: Skid Row. But don't fret—this isn't some gentrification project; the 14-story tower proposed for a site at Sixth and Crocker Streets is from Weingart, operators of the nearby Weingart Center, which offers job services, transitional housing, and food to the people of Skid Row, and has been a fixture there since 1983, says the Downtown News. It would hold 200 units of permanent supportive housing for the formerly homeless.
The new building would rise near the 11-story Weingart Center and would replace a one-story building that serves as a cafeteria. The building, designed by Pasadena-based Gonzalez Goodale Architects, would have 200 apartments with glass balconies on its upper levels, and a workforce development center with three stories of offices below. The structure would be U-shaped with a central courtyard; the middle segment of the building would only be 11 stories, but on the San Pedro side, the building would rise to 13 stories and, on the Crocker side, would peak at 14 stories.
"I told the architects I didn't want this to look like affordable housing — not some square, stucco box. I want this to look like a place you or I might live in," Weingart's CEO says.
There is no funding or budget for the Weingart tower yet, but the renderings have been presented to the Central City East Association, which was impressed with the high-end aesthetics, but wasn't ready to sign off just yet—many on the board of the organization want to move homeless services away from Downtown and Skid Row, where homeless services are centralized and therefore easily accessible to people who need them, and into other areas of LA County.
· 14-Story Tower for Homeless Individuals Proposed for Skid Row [DN]
· Here Are Michael Maltzan's Prefab Star Apartments In Skid Row [Curbed LA]
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