53-story hotel would replace convention center-adjacent apartments

A proposed 53-story hotel in South Park would bring 1,024 hotel rooms directly across the street from the Los Angeles Convention Center, according to an announcement from the developer, TriCal.

The proposal comes as the city pushes to get more hotel rooms built in proximity to the convention center. It will be designed by architecture firm Gensler, and renderings show a glassy tower with an angular roof.

“This project is exactly what is needed at this site and in the South Park area,” said Ernest Wooden Jr., president and CEO of the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board.

The site—a block west of the Pico Station, at the southeast corner of Figueroa and Pico—is occupied right now by 100 market rate apartments in a complex that TriCal opened in 2004. The building will stay occupied by current tenants until construction on the hotel starts—that’s not expected to happen for another three to five years, a rep for the project tells Curbed.

Courtesy of TriCal

The hotel’s 1,024 rooms will operate as two different, separate hotels. The ground floor of the tower will have restaurant space, and the tower will be topped by a rooftop bar. Plans for the project were submitted to the department of city planning yesterday.

In recent years, the city has been pushing for more rooms around the convention center. A 2015 report from the tourism and convention board estimated that the city lost $5 billion in events the convention center didn’t host because there weren’t enough rooms close by to accommodate attendees.

Immediately across the street, on the northeast corner of Figueroa and Pico, another developer, Lightstone, is planning a dual-towered hospitality project that will house three different hotel brands. That project’s towers are expected to be 28 and 40 stories tall.

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