The Grand, Los Ángeles / Frank Gehry

After years of delay and several difficulties among public entities and private companies, the building of The Grand started, one of the biggest vertical integrated and mixed use projects in the nation.

The start of the building process of The Grand represents the culmination of three years of intense planning and collaboration with a great group of civilian and community participants. The 3,000 million dollars investment is part of the transformation plan for the downtown of Los Angeles.

The complex, that has a total surface of 3.6 million of square feet, will be developed in several phases; the first one includes two towers, one of them with 48 floors of hotel, restaurants, shops, residences and a civic park. The target of this project is creating a new great destiny where inhabitants and visitors could take a walk.

The public sites will be paid by private companies and public funds generated by the project, the one is estimated to generate around 29,000 employees during the building, 5,900 employees in long term and 35.6 million dollar in local and estate taxes.

The first phase has been developed by the great known architect Frank Gehry (designer of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, situated right in front the new project), for the firm Related Companies, one of the urban development private companies in USA, with its HQ in New York and offices in Chicago, Miami, L.A., Phoenix and Boston, that is in charge of the project.

As Related says, during the months of building there will be no trouble to the normal activity of Los Angeles citizens, and the only difference will be that vehicles could not park in the garage situated in the corner of Grand avenue with First Street.

The demolition of the structure of the parking will start in the next February. The start of the transformation of the current County Mall, in a new 16 acre people’s park is scheduled for the next fall.

The central piece of the architecture of The Grand will be a 48-storey tower, situated in the corner of Grand Avenue with the Second Street, and will include the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which will house 295 rooms, and finished with 266 luxury apartments for sale.

Designed by Gehry, the Mandarin will be similar to the AAA Hotel, Five-Diamond in New York, which Related built in 2004.

The Five-Diamond is part of a collection of luxury restaurants, designer shops, super luxury apartments and central offices of Related and Time Warner Center.

Currently, in the First Street and Olive, The residential tower built by Gehry will combine 126 market price apartments and 98 cheap ones.

The 23,000 square meters of retail shops will include a selection of boutiques and restaurants that will be important for the L.A. downtown regeneration as a shopping destiny. As well, the kind of restaurants considered for this project pretends to offer the most exclusive options for the middle-high class customers, attracted by the dynamic cultural district of the city, where will be situated The Grand.

The project was approved in 2005 by the Inspectors Court of the County of Los Angeles.