West Hollywood design committee endorses Robertson Lane project

The Robertson Lane project in West Hollywood is winning favorable reviews from the design review subcommittee of the city’s planning commission as well as some residents, WeHoville reports.

The hotel and retail project would transform a section of La Peer Drive, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, incorporating the historic The Factory, the former home of a disco club with ties to the gay rights movement (one of the country’s first big fundraisers for AIDS research was hosted there).

As WeHoville notes, the subcommittee met Thursday with two of three of its members supporting the design. (The dissenter, commissioner John Altschul, compared it to an “uncooked omelet.”)

Design review committee meetings are not usually hot-ticket items, but this one saw an impressive turnout of more than 20 attendees. About a dozen of them spoke on this project, “each signaling his or her support,” WeHoville says.

Representatives for the Los Angeles Conservancy and the National Trust for Historic Preservation—which once listed The Factory on its Most Endangered Places in America list—spoke in favor of the project’s design and its reuse of the historic nightclub.

If ultimately approved, the project would create a cut-through pedestrian plaza that would connect La Peer to Robertson Boulevard and add a 242-room hotel and space for stores and restaurants along the street. It would also involve taking apart The Factory and putting it back together in a different location on the site.

It is being developed by Faring (formerly, Faring Capital) and designed by the Culver City firm Hodgetts + Fung Design and Architecture.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the project was endorsed by the planning commission. It was supported by the design review committee.

• WeHo’s Robertson Lane Project Is Praised by Two of Three Design Review Commissioners [WeHoville]
• West Hollywood's Famed 'Factory' Might Be Preserved Instead of Demolished [Curbed LA]