Tribune Media Company, owners of the Los Angeles Times, is aiming to build a 30-story tower on an existing parking lot across the street from the historic L.A. Times building in Downtown Los Angeles.
The project, first reported by Urbanize.LA, is designed by architecture firm Gensler and will feature 107 condominium units, 534,000 square feet of commercial space, and 7,200 square feet of ground-floor commercial area. Located at the corner of 2nd Street and Broadway, the project, when completed, will also stand directly above a new underground subway station being built as part of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (Metro) so-called Regional Connector project.
The Regional Connector is an underground tunnel that will link together the existing Blue and Expo transit lines with Union Station and the Gold Line, fusing the Blue and Expo lines with the northern and southern halves of the Gold, respectively, creating two cross-regional transit lines that pass through the downtown area instead of merely coming to a dead end there as they currently do.
A rendering for the project shows a highly-articulated tower with sections of grouped, projecting floorplates jutting out at various heights, along all sides. Each of the building’s boxy, projecting masses is clad in a different material and utilizes alternating stylistic approaches, with certain portions clad in floor-to-ceiling glass curtain walls and other sections featuring vertical ribbons of glazing spanning multiple floors. These masses overhang and project from one another, with other types of sun shading strategies like vertical and horizontal louvers populating the structure’s facades throughout.
The development adds to speculation that a previously-mentioned plan to demolish a William Pereira–designed section of the existing L.A. Times building will begin to move forward, as well. That plan would demolish the 1970s-era structure for another housing tower, this one potentially containing apartments instead of condominiums. A construction timeline for either tower has not yet been released.
