IN THE MAY NEWSLETTER:
View from the north (along Fairfax Avenue) of the Academy Museum; courtesy of A.M.P.A.S.
OSCAR* COMES TO THE MIRACLE MILE
MMRA President James O’Sullivan and Vice President Alice Cassidy met with representatives from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on April 17th to discuss the plans for the Academy Museum. Heather Cochran, Managing Director of the Museum Project, and William Delvac, the Academy’s land use attorney, made a presentation of the proposed re-adaptation of the former May Company building into a museum of motion picture history utilizing the Academy’s vast archives which includes Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.
The Academy Museum will contain over 290,000 square feet of galleries, exhibition space, movie theaters, and special event spaces. The Academy projects that the museum will attract over 800,000 visitors per year. Architect Renzo Piano has designed a modern addition to replace the 1946 northern annex of the original 1939 May Company building. The new glass dome addition will contain a 1,000-seat theater with an enclosed observation deck at the top and the street-level area beneath the dome functioning as a public piazza and northern entrance to the museum. An additional entrance will be located on Wilshire Boulevard. The northern side of the museum will also contain a motor court accessed from Fairfax Avenue to allow deliveries to the museum and to serve as a passenger drop-off area for premieres and special events. The Academy proposes to share LACMA’s existing public parking facilities.
Cutaway view (Fairfax Avenue side) of the Academy Museum; courtesy of A.M.P.A.S.
The MMRA has fought long and hard to save the landmark May Company building. The Academy plans to preserve and restore the Wilshire and Fairfax facades and use the existing display windows for rotating displays promoting the museum. The Academy has entered into a long-term lease with Museum Associates who operates LACMA and acquired the May Company building in 1994.
During the lengthy meeting O’Sullivan and Cassidy raised many issues regarding the impact the museum would have on the Miracle Mile: traffic and parking being foremost. Community Design Overlay guidelines, the demolition of the 1946 annex, and other details relating to existing zoning and land use regulations were also discussed.
Academy representatives Cochran and Delvac were forthright in their responses and honest about admitting that they didn’t have all the answers. Their candor allowed for an open and frank conversation. The Academy agreed to launch a full Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on the project in order to carefully detail its full effect on the community and present specific means of mitigating issues regarding traffic, parking, and noise. The EIR process will provide the MMRA an opportunity to have input into the development and operation of the museum and participate in crafting solutions to insure a good relationship between the residents of the Miracle Mile and the Academy.
"They seemed sincerely interested in our concerns,” remarked MMRA Vice President Alice Cassidy. “The meeting was very pleasant and positive, but we spoke in generalities – I look forward to getting into specifics."
May Company, circa 1950s.
[ * “Oscar” is the copyrighted property and registered trademark
of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.]
Additional details of the museum’s design can be found here:
http://www.oscars.org/academymuseum/
Further reading...
Los Angeles Times:
Motion Picture Academy unveils ambitious plans for film museum
Variety:
Time Has Come for Academy Museum
Arch Daily – Architecture News:
Academy Unveils Designs for Renzo Piano Designed Museum
SCROLL DOWN FOR A Perfect Storm
A Perfect Storm
A Message from
Jim O’Sullivan,
President of the MMRA
The Miracle Mile Residential Association is beginning to analyze a number of upcoming development projects and some basic questions are already being asked. They deal with mobility and the perennial issue of traffic. While the Miracle Mile isn’t alone in traffic concerns, we certainly have far fewer options than many other areas to get in and out of our neighborhood.
A comment at one of the mayoral debates caught my attention – it was said that what Los Angeles needed was a tunnel under the Sepulveda Pass to connect the Westside to the Valley. My immediate thought was that the Miracle Mile needs a tunnel under Park La Brea, because it sits like a large man-made mountain just to our north, which effectively gives us only four north-south routes into and out of the Miracle Mile. Fairfax, Hauser, Curson and La Brea are the only streets that can get us to 3rd Street or Beverly Boulevard – where many of us go to purchase a number of items we need to live our lives.
 Frankly, if we had more retail services in the Miracle Mile this would not be as big a problem as it is. Wilshire Boulevard is designated by the City as a “Regional Center” – which means it serves as a focal point of regional commerce, identity, and activity for a population of 250,000 to 500,000 persons. In the Miracle Mile we have the corporate and professional offices, the restaurants, and the entertainment and cultural facilities that regional centers are supposed to have, but we are severely lacking in retail stores – which is one of the main reasons why so many of us are in our cars trying to get in and out of the neighborhood. The so-called “mixed-use” projects recently constructed aren’t particularly “mixed” – they have provided hundreds of new apartments and a dozen-or-so new restaurants but that’s pretty much it. We did get a cash-for-gold outfit and a bank branch, but no clothing, furniture, or other retail stores. If you need a pair of jeans or a coffee table you’re not going to find it on the Miracle Mile.
Once upon a time we had the May Company at the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire where I could get most everything I now have to travel to the Grove or the Beverly Center to get. (The May Company tearoom also had great Cobb salads, which I still miss.) In its place we will get the Academy Museum that I’m sure will be incredible – but it will add an extra 800,000 visitors a year to the 1.2 million visitors that LACMA already attracts. On the drawing board at Wilshire and Curson is a quarter of a million square feet of office space with 300-plus residential units to be added to the 1,200-plus units already built in the Miracle Mile in the last eight years.
 The City of Los Angeles is about to undertake an Environmental Impact Report for the Mobility Element Update of the General Plan. It’s the old Circulation Element, which deals with everything that moves. Part of that update requires the City to comply with the state mandated “Complete Streets Act” which will fundamentally change how we use our streets. We have to make them accessible and safe for pedestrians, bicycles, autos and the movement of goods. Given that LA is once again the number one most congested city in the United State that will be a real challenge because some of the plans call for removing traffic lanes from service to facilitate certain mobility goals (i.e., bike lanes). Meanwhile, Metro will start construction of the Bus Rapid Transit project along Wilshire this summer which will divert as much as 30% of rush hour traffic onto 6th and 8th streets and the L.A. Department of Transportation and other forces seem eager to snatch traffic lanes from 6th Street for bike lanes.
It is a perfect storm: unchecked development and utopian transportation schemes colliding into each other and rendering our community paralyzed. Advocates and planners tout high density and bike lanes as the one-size-fits-all solution for all that ails Los Angeles. But the residents of the Miracle Mile want specific solutions to their specific problems. We don’t oppose innovation or change, but there are practical things that were working for us – like the DASH bus system that has seen its budget and service slashed. And if the City wants to talk about mobility, how about they fix the sidewalks first? Why isn’t repaving Wilshire or La Brea a priority to all these whiz-kid urban planners?
The Miracle Mile Residential Association is prepared to participate in any and all efforts to keep our streets and sidewalks usable, livable and safe. But we will not surrender our common sense to achieve these goals. We will ask hard questions and demand answers that our grounded in reality. Pie in the sky isn’t on our menu.
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SCROLL DOWN FOR Miracle Mile Real Estate Sales
Miracle Mile Real Estate
April 2013 Sales:
 1022 S. Curson Ave.
3 bdrm, 2 bath, 1454 sq ft
lot: 6210 sq ft
listing price: $749,000
sale price: $765,000
sale date: 4-16-2013
 826 S. Spaulding Ave.
3 bdrm, 2 bath, 1985 sq ft
lot: 5501 sq ft
listing price: $1,199,000
sale price: $1,195,000
sale date: 4-19-2013
 5764 San Vicente Blvd.
condominium
2 bdrm, 2 bath, 1310 sq ft
listing price: $479,000
sale price: $501, 000
sale date: 4-26-2013
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SCROLL DOWN FOR On the Drawing Board
On the drawing board:
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR ENLARGED VIEW. Courtesy of Cuningham Group.
New Mixed-Use Project
at Fairfax and San Vicente
Shalhevet School, which occupies the parcel bounded by Fairfax Avenue, San Vicente Boulevard, and South Orange Grove Avenue, recently sold a 1.5 acre portion of their 2.6 acre property to Alliance Residential, a development company who proposes to build approximately 145 apartment units and 4,500 square feet of street retail. Plans include a four to six story podium style building with subterranean parking and retail along the Fairfax and San Vicente frontage.
Shalhevet School will construct a new facility on the northern remainder of their property beside Tom Bergin’s restaurant.
A representative from Alliance Residential is scheduled to attend the upcoming MMRA board meeting on May 2nd to provide more details about the project and take questions. All residents of the Miracle Mile are invited to attend.
Additional information: Shalhevet School Online News
SCROLL DOWN FOR The Miracle Mile in Film
The Miracle Mile in Film
  
The Miracle Mile has served as a location in a number of films, most famously in the cult favorite Miracle Mile (1988) – a-boy-meets-girl at the La Brea Tar Pits, learns of an impending nuclear apocalypse on a pay phone outside of Johnie’s Coffee Shop, then spends the rest of the movie searching for her in the Miracle Mile.
The Miracle Mile also had a starring role in Volcano (1997) when the La Brea Tar Pits erupts and spews a river of molten lava down Wilshire Boulevard that consumes the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the May Company building.
Other films featuring the La Brea Tar Pits include Bad Influence (1990) and Last Action Hero (1993).
Steve Martin roller skated through LACMA’s Ahmanson Gallery in L.A. Story (1991) and Robert Altman used the museum’s central courtyard to stage a star-studded charity event in The Player (1992).
Chris Burden's “Urban Lights” display of vintage streetlamps at the Odgen entrance to LACMA is seen in Valentine’s Day (2010) and No Strings Attached (2011).
But perhaps the most enduring star in the Miracle Mile is Johnie’s Coffee Shop at Wilshire and Fairfax. Its stellar resume includes appearances in Quentin Tarentino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992), The Big Lebowski (1998), and American History X (1998).
 
Miracle Mile Trailer Volcano Trailer
[Click images to view]
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