Millennium Hollywood Gets Towers Trimmed

LOS ANGELES-The huge Millennium Hollywood mixed-use development will have its twin towers reduced in height.

The City Council's Planning and Land Use Management Committee has approved a modified design for the apartment, retail, hotel and office project that will see its East tower cut from a planned 55 stories to 39, while the West tower will be lowered from a planned 45 stories to 35.

The Planning and Land Use Management Committee forwarded the updated project to the full City Council for a July 24 vote.

Millennium Hollywood is planned as a million square feet, and the height reduction will not reduce that number, according to Brian Lewis, a spokesman for Millenium Partners, the project developers. It is located on 4.5 acres of vacant parking lots surrounding the famed Capitol Records building.

The project is one aspect of a massive overhaul currently underway in the Hollywood Blvd. and Vine St. area. Also nearby is the big Columbia Square mixed-use development.

Local residents have complained about the Millennium Hollywood project's impact on the area, citing traffic concerns, among other issues.

Reports indicate the new changes will likely see the project's street-level open space reduced, and its buildings may be moved closer to the sidewalk. There are also indications that the buildings will now be bulkier than designs unveiled before the recent changes.

Lewis says the characterizations are accurate. However, he contends that “there is still going to be ample open space on the street level. The final design of that portion of the project is still being worked on. The Design Guidelines that are part of the project call for a minimum of 18% of the site to be open space, and that threshold will be exceeded at the end of the day.”

Millennium Partners executives remain bullish on the Hollywood project.

“We fully intend to maintain the high standards of excellence that we demand from ourselves and comply with the city's Do Real Planning principles that have been so integral in shaping the project, such as locating density around mass transit,” said a statement from Philip Aarons, founding partner of Millennium Partners. “We have spent more than six years crafting our transit-oriented, mixed-use development with the guiding principles being to honor and preserve the Capitol Records tower and create an enhanced destination around it. And we will continue to improve our plans so as to design the best possible project for this vital site.”

Mario Palumbo, a partner with Millennium Partners, said positive expressions of support for the project were “immensely gratifying and proof that many Hollywood residents share our vision of what Hollywood can be.”

As previously reported by GlobeSt.com, there's an influx of technology and media companies into Hollywood. They're part of a growing area that's coined a new nickname.