Billion-Dollar Wilshire Grand Project Lighting Up Downtown Los Angeles with Ads?

City Council expected to approve a sign district for two skyscrapers with lighting from top to bottom, reigniting the debate about outdoor advertising.

by David Zahniser, Los Angeles Times, 03.26.2011

A pair of new Los Angeles skyscrapers could dramatically alter the lights of downtown, reigniting the city's long-running fight over outdoor advertising.

If developers of the proposed billion-dollar Wilshire Grand project have their way, such colorful images as stars, butterflies and waterfalls would fade in and out along the upper floors of both their planned 45-story hotel and their 65-floor office tower, thanks to thousands of tiny lights embedded in the buildings' surface.

Both skyscrapers would see their lowest 10 floors emblazoned with an array of commercial images, from flashing digital signs to streaming "news ribbons."

Supporters say the plan, modeled after similar technology on the Chanel building in Tokyo and the Cira Centre in Philadelphia, would bring energy and vibrancy to a stretch of downtown — the Figueroa Corridor — that already is being remade by the L.A. Live complex a few blocks to the south.

Opponents say the plan would reopen the way for turning high-rise towers into massive versions of the electronic billboards that have generated protests in many parts of the city.

The debate and lobbying at City Hall are scheduled to come to a key City Council vote Tuesday on allowing the lighted signage. On Friday, the council unanimously agreed to subsidize construction by waiving up to $79 million in hotel bed taxes.

Korean Air, which owns the project and is backed by business groups, unions and high-profile politicians, has the clear upper hand.

But allowing such a vast array of graphics has unsettled some officials, including Planning Commission President Bill Roschen, who has made a living designing buildings with billboards attached to them.

"It is on such a radically different scale than anything we've seen in the city," he said. The vote is not just about a specific signage proposal, he said. "It's about a city skyline." The city shouldn't allow light emitting diodes, or LEDs, on dozens of stories of any skyscraper until it has a plan for regulating such technology citywide, he added.

The debate also involves differing visions of how downtown Los Angeles will evolve. Nearby Grand Avenue, with its museums and concert halls, is being remade as L.A.'s cultural center. Figueroa Street has been steadily moving in the direction of the Las Vegas strip.

Once the council casts a series of votes on whether to create a new sign district around the Wilshire Grand, Korean Air has promised to spend $400,000 to study ways to extend the district south on Figueroa to L.A. Live, which already is emblazoned with spotlights and enormous animated digital signs.

That effort threatens to rekindle the long-running City Hall war over outdoor signs.

For years, as huge billboards proliferated across the city, many neighborhood leaders viewed local politicians as too willing to bend to the wishes of the outdoor advertising industry, which has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect favored candidates.

Then, in 2009, newly elected City Atty. Carmen Trutanich began cracking down on illegal signs. Last year, he began tossing some building owners in jail, alleging that they had covered buildings with unpermitted supergraphics.

Since then, the billboard wars have been quiescent. The fight over Figueroa appears to be the first stirring of a new round.

The proposal put forward by Korean Air and its subsidiary company, Hanjin International Corp., would be visually dramatic. The lower floors of the hotel, planned to open in 2015, and the office tower that is scheduled to be finished two years later, would include an array of animated images, including digital signs that change as frequently as every eight seconds.

The upper 10% of each skyscraper would display digital signs that rotate the names of the project's owner and major tenants. Covering multiple stories of the buildings between the 10th floor and the top would be graphics created with LEDs. The lights would be allowed on 18% of the upper-floor exteriors, according to the company's representatives.

Those lights, spaced six inches apart, would be allowed only between windows, not directly over them. They also could not be used to form words or any kind of advertising logo, such as a Nikeswoosh or a Coca-Cola bottle.

Ayahlushim Getachew, senior vice president for Thomas Properties Group, Korean Air's partner on the project, said that type of lighting would be perfect for Figueroa Street, home not only to L.A. Live but also Staples Center, the Convention Center and possibly a new football stadium. Combined with various forms of digital advertising on the lower floors, the technology would lure pedestrians and make Figueroa Street a more vibrant tourist destination, she said.
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Posted by ProTech at 3/28/2011 12:11 PM
Categories: Construction News
Tags: wilshire grand project wilshire grand construction construction cloudware protech procore dealer web
 

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