Newly-submitted environmental documents are revealing all the secrets of starchitect Frank Gehry and developer Townscape Partner's plan for 8150 Sunset, a huge mixed-use project for a site at the eastern edge of the Sunset Strip, once home to Old Hollywood's famous Garden of Allah complex and now home to a stripmall. After neighbors revolted against the original plans in 2013, Townscape brought Gehry in to design a project with the "same overall intensity" but with less retail space (meaning less traffic) and a "view corridor" allowing Hollywooders to see clear through to the Hollywood Hills.
Gehry's version of the project is composed mainly of a South Building for residential uses and a North Building along Sunset Boulevard for retail uses. The South Building would have "three tower elements," 15 stories to the west along Havenhurst Drive, 11 stories to the east along Crescent Heights, and five stories in the middle. It would hold a total of 249 units—219 of those would be rentals (with 28 affordable units) and 30 would be condos. There would be "outdoor semi-private areas" on the third and seventh floors of the residential buildings.
The North Building would range from one to three stories with an outdoor terrace over the first-floor retail shops, although an "architectural projection" would rise seven stories on the northwest corner of the site. Townscape is planning for a grocery store, a health club, a walk-in bank (perhaps to replace the Chase on the site), 23,158 square feet of restaurant space, and 3,842 square feet of retail space. There would also be a "smaller, single-story retail structure" in the middle of the site.
The shorter central buildings and a 27,000-square-foot central plaza will allow a "150-foot-wide, open north-south-oriented view corridor … that provides views southward across the Project Site from locations to the north and vice-versa." Townscape also plans to convert the city-owned traffic island at Crescent Heights and Sunset into a small public space. And to top (bottom, really) it all off: 820 parking spaces in four levels underground (up from three previously proposed).
Take a look at how this'll all transform the enormous site at the Hollywood/West Hollywood border:
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