A Hotel Rises On Spring Street!

Since Ed Fuentes over at BlogDowntown attended out our DLANC (Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Planning Committee meeting last Wednesday, I decided to wait until he posted his story before mentioning the hotel since he would have the photo (see above link). And Anna Scott of the Downtown News was also there, so her story should be on-line by Friday night also.

The main points I want to add are to answer some of the questions posed by the commenters, comments that mainly concerned the urban planning aspects of the mixed use condo/hotel project and how it affects the views of the adjacent El Dorado and Rowan properties, also owned by partnerships in which developer Tom Gilmore is invovled.

First, the Spring Street views of the Rowan will be largely protected. A greenbelt for the Rowan will follow the jogged exterior of the building and the majority of the new tower will be directly behind the Gilmore owned parking structure on Main Strew which will house the majority of the parking for Gilmore's other Old Bank District properties. A large landscaped entrance to that garage will be between the El Dorado and the new condo/hotel project which will give views and light and air to the El Dorado and the hotel's entrance will be along that driveway.

Additionally, the portion of the new project between the rear portion of the Rowan Building and Spring will be facing a U-shaped single story addition to the tower that will have two restaurants opening out onto a landscaped sitting area that will face Spring Street. So all the units in the Rowan will have their direct Spring Street views preserved except for a small number of ground floor units in the rear wing which will open onto the outdoor space reserved for the Rowan.

A third restaurant will be at the base of the tower - which will have its parking partially underground, but mostly in the base of the tower which will only rise from a portion of the base. There will also be a small store and possibly a cafe facing the alley (which will also be a landscaped pedestrian walkway) that runs between 4th and 5th Streets, perpendicular to the driveway entrance off Spring to the parking garage on Main.