I’ve seen the LA skyline from just about every possible angle and elevation. The city core has freeways that run on all sides of it and when driving by at the wrong time of day motorists are often going slow enough to be able to appreciate it for a time. When landing by plane LAX is far enough from downtown that you can see it as you approach and get a good perspective on it. It’s not that LA is best known for it’s city skyline, but it’s not known for having an unattractive one.
If a group fronted by Hanjin owned Korean Air gets its way the Los Angeles skyline will begin to resemble Las Vegas with all its glitz and tackiness. The plan is to build a 45 story hotel and adjacent 65 story office building and festoon each with an array of computer controlled LED lights that could form moving images of stars, butterflies and anything else the building management can think up. The project is budgeted at $1B.
The bottom 10 floors would show advertisements while the floors above 10 would show images. To make things worse the top 10% of each building would use the lights to display the major tenants and building owners’ names. It’s not uncommon for a major tenant to negotiate signage rights but the familiar names on buildings do not often scroll by in a stock ticker fashion.
The new buildings would be built where the Wilshire Grand Hotel now sits. The ground level advertisements would look like this:
The whole thing will just end up looking like a 13 year old’s MySpace profile if this is the direction things go.
Images: AC Martin and Christopher A. Joseph & Associates
Source LA Times.
