Rumors have been floating around for the past few years that the '70s-era entertainment center, home of the struggling Shubert Theater and directly across from the Century Plaza Hotel on Avenue of the Stars, would be demolished to make room for a modern office and retail facility. Trammell Crow manages the site for the owner, institutional advisor J.P. Morgan Fleming Asset Management.

Globest.com reported last month that Trammell Crow had finally decided to pull the trigger on the makeover. Since then, Trammell has indeed announced plans to tear down the existing complex and build about 700,000 sf of new office space on the site as well as about 50,000 sf of retail space.

Tentatively called 2000 Avenue of the Stars, the project's focal point will be an unusual, 15-story class A office building with a 90-foot-by-110-foot opening in the middle. Each side of the building will essentially function as a separate office tower, but they'll be connected by an extended third floor and top two floors of about 70,000 sf each. The other floors will have about 28,000 sf each.

The proposed building was designed by the Santa Monica office of global architectural giant Gensler. Demolition work could begin as early as next year, senior vice president Dan Niemann says that because the new project will command some of the highest rents in Southern California, it will be too expensive "for non-office tenants" such as the Shubert Theater to afford.

When the 1,800-seat Shubert opened in 1972, it was touted as an architectural gem that could catapult LA into the cultural elite of such cities as New York and London. But it had more misses than hits, and lately has seen more competition from the small but growing number of other live venues in the Southland.

Meantime, the center's signature office tenant--entertainment conglomerate ABC--moved the last of its employees out of the Century City development and into new headquarters space in Burbank last year.