The City of West Hollywood’s Planning Commission unanimously approved a new luxury hotel on La Brea Avenue, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, at its meeting Thursday evening, according to the news website WEHOville.com. The project is being developed by CIM Group, developers of the Farmers Insurance parcel in Brookside. It will be located across the street from the Target at the Gateway Shopping complex at the corner of La Brea Avenue and Santa Monica Blvd.
Reported WEHOville.com:
“Located at 1040 La Brea Ave., the hotel will be 100 feet tall and have nine floors for a total of 67,000 square feet on a half-acre site. It will have 85 hotel rooms plus another eight residential apartment units, as well as a ground-floor restaurant and a bar/lounge on the top floor with views of the Hollywood Hills. It will also have four levels of parking (one subterranean, three above ground), plus a large outdoor pool and meeting rooms on the fifth floor.
Architect Neil Denari of the Los Angeles-based NMDA Architects said he hoped the high-rise building would become a landmark for the city’s Eastside. The building’s exterior “skin” will be a metallic silvery grey that changes color slightly as sunlight reflects off it from various angles throughout the day.”
In an apparent nod to the design, commissioners added the requirement that any changes to the design come back to the commission’s design review committee for approval instead of going to city staff. According to WEHOville, it seems the concern stemmed for the numerous changes to the Sunset-La Cienega project on the southern side of Sunset Boulevard at La Cienega Boulevard, also developed by CIM.
“That massive retail-residential-hotel project went through so many small changes over the 16 years it was in development, that by the time it was finally built, it looked nothing like what the Planning Commission had originally approved. Thus, by adding this requirement for the La Brea hotel, the commissioners want to assure that what they approved is what gets built,” reported WEHOville.com.
