It appears the controversial new building going up at the corner of 9th and Hill streets in Downtown L.A.—the one that will block one view of the Eastern Columbia Building—will be going forward as planned. Two different appeals by angry neighborhood residents and preservation advocates were quashed by the City Council at a meeting yesterday.
The so-called “clock block” tower, formally known as the Alexan, will rise 27 floors high, while the Art Deco landmark Eastern Columbia Building is only 13. Right now the illuminated clock at the top of the building can be seen from every direction around it.
At the time that the Eastern Columbia Building was built, in 1930, it was one of the tallest buildings in the region. Back then, the city had a height limit of 150 feet, but a special exemption was made for the decorative clock tower, which reaches a total of 275 feet tall and has been an icon of the DTLA skyline ever since. The clock itself was restored in 2005 as part of an overhaul of the building into luxury condominiums.
The residents of those condos have been among the most vocal opponents to the arrival of the Alexan, including hiring the attorney who filed these most recent protests with the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, as Curbed L.A. reports. The filings argued that, because the design initially proposed for the Alexan was much smaller, before the extra, clock-blocking floors were added to the blueprints, it should have to start the process over with a new environmental review and comment period. The Council ultimately found that the developers had done enough to comply with the rules and can go forward with the new plans without that additional process.
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