Wilshire Grand Center

History

The original Wilshire Grand Hotel opened in 1952 as the Hotel Statler, on the site of the new Wilshire Grand. In 1950, the city of Los Angeles issued the largest single building permit at the time for the construction of the hotel, which cost over $15 million. The hotel quickly became a landmark of downtown Los Angeles, and over its 59-year lifespan attracted famous guests including President John F. Kennedy and Pope John Paul II.

In 1954, two years after its opening, Hilton Hotels & Resorts purchased the Statler Hotels chain, renaming the hotel the Statler Hilton in 1958. In 1968 Hilton completed a $2.5 million renovation of the hotel and renamed it the Los Angeles Hilton, and later the Los Angeles Hilton and Towers. Reliance Group later purchased the hotel in 1983 and invested $30 million in renovations. Korean Air purchased the Los Angeles Hilton from Reliance in 1989. They changed the hotel's management and it became the Omni Los Angeles Hotel in 1995 and then later the Wilshire Grand Hotel in 1999. Among the major events hosted, this included the 1952 Emmy Awards, the HQ for the 2006 Miss Universe Pageant.

Seeking to revive the Wilshire Grand as a landmark and icon of Los Angeles, chairman and CEO Cho Yang-ho of Hanjin Group conceived the idea of developing a new complex which would include the tallest building in Los Angeles, at 1099 ft. It is also part of an urban development effort to revitalize the Figueroa Street corridor of downtown Los Angeles as a vibrant light-and-sign district, similar to New York's Times Square.

The original hotel closed on December 31, 2011. Demolition of the original building began on October 23, 2012, and continued for over a year until November 21, 2013, when a bottoming-out ceremony was held in the 106 ft excavated for the towers.

File:315 Wilshire Grand.jpg|Wilshire Grand Hotel, 2006 File:Wilshire Grand demolition.jpg|Wilshire Grand Hotel demolition, 2013

Design

Originally envisioned as two towers, the taller of which would have been 380 m tall, the complex is now a single 1100 ft, 73-story tower consisting of the 889-room InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown hotel, retail, observation deck and office space. The Los Angeles–based architectural firm, A.C. Martin Partners, oversaw the project and prepared the current design. They took over from Thomas Properties, which managed the early proposals, but which was replaced when the owners became dissatisfied with their approach.

A distinctive feature of the building is its sail-shaped crown which is illuminated with LED lighting at night. The giant LED configuration in the crown has displayed the Korean Air logo (a subsidiary of Hanjin, owner of the Wilshire Grand Center), the Intercontinental Hotel logo, operator of the tower's hotel, LA Rams logo, and LA28s colors. The LED lighting has a 60-hertz refresh rate, with any color, to do high-speed, pulsating color light shows. The crown has two street level LED 42 by 60 feet displays, of 250 million pixels each, nearly a fifth of a mile up in the sky, atop Los Angeles' tallest building, and the building itself is also covered in roughly 2.5 miles of LEDs running up and down the building’s spine.

The tower will spearhead part of a new planned light and sign district that will extend along the Figueroa Corridor down to L.A. Live. According to recent renderings, it is unclear however to what extent LED lighting and advertising will be applied. The spire weighs 200,000 lb and adds 294 feet in height to the building.

The skyscraper is a distinctive part of the Los Angeles skyline, as it is the first building over 75 feet tall built since 1974 to not feature a "flat roof" design, an integral part of buildings in Los Angeles today. The pattern of buildings in Los Angeles to feature these "flat roofs" was the result of a 1974 fire ordinance which required all tall buildings in the city to include rooftop helipads in response to the Joelma Fire in São Paulo, Brazil, in which helicopters could not be used to effect rescues from the rooftop of the building because of the lack of a landing spot, and could otherwise have prevented many deaths. The Wilshire Grand was granted an exception by the Los Angeles City Fire Department however, as the building includes advances in fire safety and building technology (such as a reinforced concrete central core) which exceeds the city's current fire code. The building nevertheless has a helipad, but it is smaller than the uniform standard used in the city, and, like all helipads, can only be used in emergencies. The helipad is still big enough for a smaller rescue or fire helicopter to land onto.

The elevators in Wilshire Grand Center are supplied by Otis Elevator Company. The four double-deck express cars servicing the hotel's main lobby on the 70th floor travel at 1600 ft/min.

Construction

Turner Construction received the contracts for both the demolition of the former hotel and the construction of the new tower. The latter began on February 15, 2014, with a record 21600 cuyd pour of concrete in just 20 hours, creating an 18 ft base for what would become the tallest building west of the Mississippi.

The foundation is set on bedrock known as the Fernando Formation; this siltstone has been compressed by an ocean that formerly covered the area and is a good base for a building.

The topping out ceremony was held on March 8, 2016, and when the spire was placed on September 3, the Wilshire Grand became the tallest building in Los Angeles at 1,100 feet. The supertall building opened on June 23, 2017.

The building, while recognized as "tallest" in the city by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, achieves this recognition through the height of its decorative sail and spire rather than highest occupiable floor space. From the ground, due to local topography, the Wilshire Grand sits visibly lower than other surrounding buildings. From the vantage of the building's 73rd floor observation deck, the US Bank Tower is markedly higher in elevation, and remains downtown Los Angeles' most prominent visual landmark.

Ownership

This building is owned by the Hanjin Group (through its subsidiary Hanjin International), a South Korean conglomerate that also owns Korean Air. In 2020, Hanjin negotiated a refinancing of the building's debt ($900 million), which came with the condition of selling of the property in the future. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the value of the building dropped from $1.1 billion to $573 million. From 2011 to 2017, Hanjin received $60 million in tax breaks from the City of Los Angeles.

Major tenants

Finance

• PacWest Bancorp

Government

• Southern California Association of Governments

Hospitality

• InterContinental

Real estate

• Cushman & Wakefield

Transportation

• Metrolink

Gallery

File:Wilshire Grand.jpg File:Wilshire Grand Center, Los Angeles (D. Jones) - Flickr.jpg File:Wilshire Grand2017 cropped.jpg File:Inter-Continental Los angeles (35966531210).jpg File:The Pool (9624615783).jpg|Pool at InterContinental Hotel File:Hotel room InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown - February 2024 - Sarah Stierch 01.jpg|Hotel room at InterContinental Hotel

Floor plans

• Floors basement to 7: Podium building with retail and InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown meeting rooms, gym, and pool.
• Floors 10 to 29: Offices
• Floors 31 to 68: InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown - hotel rooms
• Floor 69: InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown - restaurants - Sora & Dekkadance
• Floor 70: InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown - main lobby and Sky Bar
• Floor 71: InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown - restaurant - La Boucherie
• Floor 73: InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown - Spire 73, the tallest open-air bar in the Western Hemisphere

Notes

References

References

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2. {{ctbuh. 9686
3. "Emporis building complex ID 127028". [[Emporis]].
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11. [https://dtla.intercontinental.com/ InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown]
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30. Lead designer [[David C. Martin]] said that the spire and the entire exterior skin of the tower will be filled with programmable LED lighting.Aragon, Greg (February 22, 2013) [http://california.construction.com/california_construction_news/2013/0222-new-wilshire-grand-to-tower-above-downtown-los-angeles.asp "New Wilshire Grand to Tower Above Downtown Los Angeles"] ''ENRCalifornia'' [[McGraw Hill Education]]
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41. Kevin Sun, [https://therealdeal.com/la/2020/09/17/korean-air-eyes-sale-of-wilshire-grand/ Korean Air eyes sale of Wilshire Grand], ''Therealdeal.com'', 17 September 2020
42. Choi Moon-hee, [http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=58106 Korean Air Borrows up to US$343.8 Mil. against Wilshire Grand Center], ''Businesskorea.co.kr'', 8 January 2021
43. Elijah Chiland, [https://la.curbed.com/2017/3/1/14779348/wilshire-grand-construction-tax-breaks-tallest-tower City gives developer of Wilshire Grand—LA’s tallest skyscraper—$60M in tax breaks], ''La.curbed.com'', 1 March 2017
44. "Los Angeles, CA Wilshire Boulevard Office".
45. "SCAG Main Office".
46. "InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown".
47. "Downtown Los Angeles".
48. "Metrolink Relocation".