“Star Tower”
Author, Wendy Kohn
02138 (March/ April 2008): 37

Frank Gehry’s latest project is coming to life in downtown L.A.: a $1 billion mixed-use development featuring two shimmering residential towers, one 19 stories high, the other 48, for the international and downtown professional crowd. Directly opposite his swooping Disney Concert Hal, Gehry’s new commission will add some style to the famously boxy L.A. skyline. Trouble may be brewing for the architect in Cambridge – where MIT is suing him for alleged design flaws in his four-year-old, $300 million Stata Center – but elsewhere, Gehry’s signature tumbling, folded, and warped surfaces are as highly sought-after as ever. His employer, William Witte, president of project developers Related of California, call Gehry’ “L.A.’s star architect.” At a city hearing for the project, Witte remembers, “Everyone said, ‘Be bold!’ And the current vision is amazing.” The development, slated to open in 2011, is phase one of the Grand Avenue Project and will include nearly 500 residential units, 250,000 square feet of retail, a 295-room Mandarin Oriental Hotel, and a 16-acre park. Its centerpiece will be the 488-story tower, which Witte hopes will become L.A.’s premium address along the city’s emerging performing corridor. The tower will house the hotel and 266 luxury apartments, modeled on the “Five Star Living” residences at New York’s Mandarin Oriental, which includes penthouses valued at $35 million. “It’s not going to be Fifth Avenue or the Champs-Elysees,” says Gehry, but “it could end up a pretty unique thing.”