Earlier this week the LA Business Journal reported that the The Paseo Plaza Hollywood community center is nearing ground breaking. The 600,000 mixed-use project will bring a welcome change to the currently blighted corner of Wilton Place and Santa Monica Boulevard.
Continental Development Group has signed on Gruen Associates Architectural firm and the project should move forward before the end of the year.
The corner was formerly home to a Sears Auto Center. The project as depicted above will be quite a change for the block and could be the beginning of a renaissance for this pocket of East Hollywood. Let the ground breaking begin!
Read more:
PR Newswire –Â Continental Development Group’s Paseo Plaza Hollywood Project Gets Community Support
It is great they’re finally moving forward to improve that lot. But let’s be honest about the reason it’s blighted in the first place – a previous overambitious developer evicted a number of successful, well patronized local businesses (as well as one of the more successful in sales per square foot Sears). The additional density of this development is going to impact an already overstressed in terms of traffic & parking area.
Here we are over one year later in October 2014.
In hindsight, this 2013 story initiated by a press release by the developer, obviously was disingenuous.
The developer for this project was a convicted felon (of wire fraud and money laundering).
By August 2013 he probably knew that he could not get funding or low interest state loans for the project if anyone did a simple background check, was shopping for a buyer, and not being truthful to the community.
For several years he said, we are breaking ground in October, but didn’t say exactly what year.
A wishy-washy and weak Wendy Greuel even ran an add against then Mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti linking him to Juri Ripinski and voting to approve the Paseo Plaza project. The add mentioned Ripinski’s conviction – But Garcetti responded that Greuel also voted for approval of the project entitlements – which also illustrates the problem with a corrupt City Council voting 99.993% in unison.