Grand Avenue awaits

In its periodic update on development activity, the Downtown News manages to find a middle ground in summarizing the status of 109 projects: slower than in the heyday of a few years ago, but livelier than the doomsayers believe. That sounds about right - at some point the credit market will improve and long-stalled developments will get going, but bankers are likely to be very stingy, especially for all but sure things. Here's what the newspaper has to say about the dead-in-the-water Grand Avenue project:

The first part of the project, a 16-acre, $56 million Civic Park, is expected to break ground by next summer. There is still no groundbreaking date for the rest of the approximately $1 billion, 1.3 million-square-foot first phase of the project, which would create a 48-story Mandarin Oriental Hotel & Residences with 295 hotel rooms and 266 condominiums, a 19-story tower with 126 market-rate apartments and 98 affordable residences, along with a 250,000-square-foot retail pavilion. [Bill Witte, West Coast president of developer the Related Companies], said Related is waiting out the current recession and the frozen lending markets, and will still need an estimated $700 million construction loan. The project's entitlements will remain in place until February 2011.

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Mark Lacter
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.
 
Mark Lacter, business writer and editor was 59
The multi-talented Mark Lacter
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