Architect Charles Moore described the lifeless skyline of downtown Los Angeles in the 1980s as a patch of asparagus. “The longest stalk and the shortest stalk are the same, but the longest stalk hit the father off the ground.”
This sprawling city of bungalows has never been known for the quality of its high-rise buildings, and not much has changed since Moore’s time. A 1950s regulation stating that every tower must have a flat roof was rescinded in 2014, revealing a handful of ungainly canopies and crowns atop new sheets of blown glass. This added further evidence to the idea that architects in this seismic city were probably better suited to survive.
But if he were still with us, Moore might have cheered to learn that among the similar shafts lies a particularly colorful cluster of asparagus stalks—and that wasn’t thanks to the architect’s intention. The planned triple tower of luxury apartments and a hotel, designed by LA firm CallisonRTKL as preposterously generic glass boxes, is now a work of graffiti art.
Oceanwide Plaza’s three towers were supposed to sit above a “lifestyle podium” (aka a shopping mall) of shops and restaurants and be wrapped in a 700ft-long LED strip – “an eye-catching technological standard-bearer”. words of the Chinese developer of the project. But in the end they evolved into something far more remarkable than the builder could have imagined. Forty stories high of graffiti tags now loom over the street, creating a dizzying vertical canvas of street art and providing one of the most colorful jumping platforms around.
“I’m sorry, but this is being abandoned without anything being done,” one of the artists, known as Hopes, told art and design website Hyperallergic. “Let’s spice this bitch up a bit and if they can’t get the job done, whatever we do.” Another artist named Aker agrees: “This building has needed love for years,” they said. “If the owners aren’t doing anything about it, the streets of Los Angeles would be happy to make something out of it.”
The dystopian landscape has sparked comparisons with other abandoned high-rise structures around the world, including the Torre de David in Caracas, the Sathorn Unique Tower in Bangkok and the pyramid-shaped “doomsday hotel” in Pyongyang. So how did this happen in Los Angeles, home to some of the most expensive real estate on the planet?
The project started in 2015; Not coincidentally, the same year that Los Angeles’ 2028 Olympic bid was approved triggered a massive wave of development interest in this part of downtown, where the Crypto.com Arena will host basketball games. The luxury residential development, part of CallisonRTKL’s broader sports and entertainment district master plan, marks a key step in Beijing-based Oceanwide’s strategic expansion into the United States. A year ago, the company had announced plans to build a 2.4sqm megaproject designed by Norman Foster in San Francisco, followed by a 1,400ft-tall tower in New York and a 44-acre resort in Honolulu. Both projects have since stalled.
As is often the case with Chinese investment projects, these developments would be financed by off-plan sales to Chinese citizens who were persuaded to invest by the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program: the promise of an easy path to a green card. For $800,000. Such projects were popular among China’s nouveau riche because they were seen as safe havens where they could park their capital, out of reach of the communist government.
In the years following President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption, starting in 2012, there was an increasingly insatiable appetite among Chinese elites to move assets out of the country for fear of state capture. Resembling Hollywood’s American Storage Building, a massive storage fortress built in the 1920s, the Oceanwide towers would actually be high-rise vaults; literal stacks of safety deposit boxes for Chinese currency, made of concrete and glass.
But the combination of the Covid pandemic and a change in Chinese laws restricting overseas investment would be a fatal blow to such plans. Although 273 EB-5 investors provided more than $136 million for the project in downtown Los Angeles, court records show Oceanwide struggled to secure additional financing to complete the $1 billion development. The company’s troubles were compounded when some investors sued Oceanwide Plaza’s senior line of credit lender, LA Downtown Investment LP, alleging mismanagement of its funds, resulting in legal action being taken against the property. As of April 2020, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began denying EB-5 petitions from investors because it determined that the project was stalled.
In addition to the crazy lawsuits, there was also a lawsuit filed by a security firm hired to protect the site because the developer stopped paying them; This might explain why it’s so easy to access taggers’ 50-layer canvases. It almost looked like an elaborate art world extravaganza, perfectly timed for the Frieze fair crowd to come to town. Perhaps a collector could diversify his Banksy collection by purchasing the world’s largest work of street art and save the project in the process.
Instead, the city council voted last month to allocate almost $4 million of taxpayer money to remove the graffiti and secure the site. “I’m not holding my breath waiting for the developer to clean up their property,” Councilman Kevin de León told the Los Angeles Times during the vote. “The purpose of my motion is clear: to prepare our city to take decisive action if the Oceanwide Plaza developer ignores its responsibilities and to blame them for the costs the city incurs.”
They can wait a while. In January, Oceanwide’s parent company filed documents with the Hong Kong stock exchange announcing it would close the group and appoint a liquidator.
These three spray-painted concrete carcasses may seem like an anomaly—an exaggerated urban art scene lifted from a television series—but they are symptoms of a broader, less visible phenomenon that threatens the pre-pandemic revitalization of downtown Los Angeles. Neighboring towers may not be labeled, but most of their floors remain empty. Office vacancy rates in the city center hit a record high of 30% last year as many building owners scrambled to vacate their blocks. Rising interest rates and falling property prices mean that many property owners now face debt burdens greater than the market value of their property. Desire to live downtown has also waned as apartment vacancy rates rose from 6.4% to 11% last year, according to real estate analytics company CoStar.
But another kind of life is booming downtown. Less than a mile from the abandoned blocks of Oceanwide, Skid Row’s homeless community has grown to an estimated 6,000 people. Struggling to find basic housing, Oceanwide planned to offer its 500 residents a “unique amenity package” consisting of private screening rooms, gyms, co-working spaces and even a private “dog wash facility” and an overhead swimming pool. a water-intensive lawn.
Given that the dream of a luxury lifestyle has evaporated, this crude monument to a city in thrall to overseas investment must be handed over to those who need it most. A billboard with Olympic speculation could become a sign of a genuine commitment to affordable housing, ready to shine on the global stage when the world’s TV cameras turn up on sports circuses.