City OKs 21-story Hollywood hotel tower

The Los Angeles City Council approved plans Wednesday for a new 21-story hotel at the intersection of Sunset and Cahuenga boulevards.

Known as the Hollywood Ivar Gardens, the project will replace an increasingly out-of-place Jack in the Box with an Art Deco-inspired structure that includes 275 guest rooms, along with 1,900 square feet of retail space and a rooftop pool and fitness center. A four-level underground parking garage will have 135 spaces.

In approving the project, the council also rejected an appeal from the Los Angeles Film School which argued that the project would be disruptive to student projects and events at the school, particularly during construction.

The council also dismissed concerns from project opponents (most of them members of local labor group Unite Here Local 11) who called it “homophobic” on the basis of the developer’s ties to Legatus, a networking group for Catholics that has advocated for homosexual conversion therapy.

At a meeting of the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee last week, a representative of Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, who represents the area where the hotel will be built, said that the councilmember (who is openly gay) had looked into the allegations of discrimination and did not find them to be credible.

Now that the project has been approved, developers can begin work on the hotel, which is expected to take 22 months to construct.

It’s far from the only hotel going up in the area. By our count, no less than five other hotels are in the works within a two block radius.

• Hollywood Jack in the Box to Make Way for Art Deco-Inspired Hotel [Curbed LA]
• 19-Story Hotel Planned for Hollywood Jack in the Box Site [Curbed LA]
• Mapped: Hollywood's Out-of-Control Hotel Boom [Curbed LA]