Given the recession, many in downtown Los Angeles assumed a mega-project once planned for the Pershing Square was dead.
But there are now signs that Park + Fifth might still have a chance.
Plans for the $1-billion high-rise condominium complex overlooking Pershing Square Park in downtown Los Angeles were unveiled in 2007 amid fanfare, with developers calling it the tallest residential building west of Chicago.
The centerpiece was a 76-story condo tower and a 14-story five-star
hotel. It would front on the park, as does the historic Biltmore Hotel,
catty-cornered to the planned development.
A series of delays has stalled the project, just as other large luxury developments planned for downtown L.A. continue to wait in the wings. The Frank Gehry-designed Grand Avenue complex, for instance, is still scheduled to rise on Bunker Hill.
The Downtown News reports there is now a new potential investor in the mix for Park + Fifth:
The potential partner, Gabriel Hertzberg of the Triangle
International Oil Company, said that he plans to take over for Park
Fifth’s financially troubled former capital partners, Africa-Israel
Investments and the Brentwood-based investment company Namco Capital
Group. Hertzberg also said that he would purchase the site and provide
a construction loan for the project. This would mark
Hertzbergs’s first real estate development. He refused to disclose the
loan amount, but said that it would amount to hundreds of millions of
dollars.
–Shelby Grad
Image: An artist’s rendering of proposed skyscraper. Credit: Park + Fifth