July 26, 2005

Ambassador Hotel Demo Ok'd

The LA Times reports that a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has ruled in favor of the Los Angeles Unified School District in a lawsuit concerning the fate of the Ambassador Hotel. The ruling allows the school district to proceed with its plans to demolish most of the historic Ambassador Hotel and build a new $318-million campus on the property. The Los Angeles Conservancy is considering whether to appeal the decision. View the entire LA Times article for more on this story.

The Los Angeles Conservancy meanwhile has been pursuing alternative proposals that would preserve the Ambassador Hotel as an important historic landmark. Stan Eckstut, one of the nation’s premier architects of urban schools and founding principal of Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn (EE&K) Architects has developed an ingenious "Small Learning Community" plan for the Ambassador site. The plan would reuse the main Ambassador Hotel structure for much-needed housing and community services, while creating a series of smaller, more child-friendly schools on the remaining 18 acres of the site.

Read more about this plan, and the Los Angeles Conservancy's next steps at: http://www.laconservancy.org.

Also check out past coverage of this issue in the PreserveLA Archives.

Additional newspaper coverage:

LA Downtown News: Judge Allows Ambassador Demolition
"Those hoping to save the Ambassador Hotel received another setback last week when Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs ruled that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) can move forward with plans to raze most of the Wilshire Boulevard structure..."

Canyon News: Historic L.A. Hotel Makes Way for Campus
"The historic Ambassador Hotel will be torn down in order to build a new Los Angeles Unified School District campus, a Los Angeles County Superior court judge ruled Tuesday..."

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