remaking a failure

Wednesday, July 28, 2004, at 08:25AM

By Eric Richardson

Over the past few days the long awaited sale of 1100 Wilshire has finally completed. The synopsis background for this maligned structure is provided by an article in today's LA Times, titled "Buyers Seek a Home Life for Empty L.A. Tower":

The 255,000-square-foot tower, whose construction was finished in 1986, has never been more than 10% occupied. It has been empty for a decade, its shell an eerie reminder of the city center's construction boom and bust.

Even before I knew any of its story, 1100 Wilshire interested me just in how set off it is from downtown, isolated from the rest of the tall buildings by the 110. It's a funny looking building, too, the actual glass tower rising from 15 stories of red brick parking.

An article from last year titled "Empty Downtown L.A. Office Tower May Be Getting Its Fill" (available several places, including here) had some fascinating bits:

Martin's firm was hired to work on the Wilshire tower by its first owner, East Asian businessman Tsai Ming Yu — but to this day, AC Martin Partners doesn't want to be known as the building's architect. "We couldn't believe he wanted us to do something this bad," Martin said of Tsai. "We were severely criticized for attempting to change the design," Martin added. But "he was the supreme owner, ruler, emperor of this project. Nobody was to question him." Martin thought that the ramped parking structure, which rises 15 levels, would make drivers dizzy and that the building's triangular shape would turn off tenants who were accustomed to laying out space in more efficient rectangles.

So now the new buyers get to try and disassociate the building from years of bad impressions, spending $60 million (on top of the $40 million purchase price) to take this thing and make it into somewhere people would want to live. The building has an unmistakable upside; that's not in question. Being west of downtown offers it an unobstructed view in three of four directions, so that will surely be a big selling point, as will easy access to the 110, the 101, the 5, and the 10. But, wow, $100 mil? That's a pretty big project.