The bands and balloons will be out this Saturday in Los Angeles as America’s last great rail station built in 1939, turns 75. On Friday, architect Ray Adamyk showed us the $7M renovation that aims to make the long neglected but still-used transit hub (60,000 passengers a year) much more of a destination.
The rejuvenated seating areas and ticket counters are splendid, but the thing that's missing is clearly retail. LA needs to read up on the triumphant lessons and experience of its DC rail station cousin.
We drove with Ray a couple miles away to see another of his recent renovations, the new Ace Hotel, born in 1927 as the United Artists Building. It’s kind of daunting when you’re redeveloping a building originally orchestrated by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith. (Again, something that Washingtonians—oh, say, those who revived Abraham Lincoln's Willard—would know about.)
We arrived in Scottsdale today to get ready for our first-ever Phoenix event tomorrow morning. Amazing factoid: despite the mid-'80s temperature, we are not going golfing.
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