Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District
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The Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District, also popularly called Times Square West, is a civic center currently under development and construction in the City of Los Angeles in California. Adjacent to the Staples Center (home of the Clippers, Lakers, Kings, Sparks, and Avengers sports teams), the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District is slated to cost approximately USD $1 billion to be paid by owner Anschutz Entertainment Group with help from Los Angeles taxpayers. It will feature six city blocks of apartments, ballrooms, bars, concert theaters, condominiums, restaurants, movie theaters and a hotel.
Architects and designers were inspired to create a district featuring the same amount of flashiness prominent at Times Square in New York City and the Ginza District of Tokyo. Construction is to begin in fall of 2004 and will be completed in 2014. The district is expected to revive the ailing economy of Los Angeles and compete with San Diego and San Francisco for convention center business.
The centerpiece of the district is a 55 story, 1,200 room hotel constructed in the parking lot directly north of the Staples Center. The hotel is expected to bring the Los Angeles Convention Center a significant increase of reservations, mainly due to the solution of the existing problem of a lack of nearby hotels to serve convention visitors. Unfortunately, the hotel was delayed in December, 2004, when local hotels complained that the funding for the hotel was unfair, as a significant of the funding came from city funds. Despite this, the rest of the district is unaffected, and most likely the hotel will be eventually built as part of the district as the complaining hotels even admit there is a need (according to late December issues of the Los Angeles Downtown News).
First Phase
The first phase of the project is scheduled to breakground in May or June 2005. The first phase will be the Nokia Theatre, which will have 7,100 seats hosting about 110 events per year, which will cost between $85-90 million. The first phase will also contain the Nokia Plaza, a retail plaza, as well as an underground parking garage, holding a fraction of the project's expected total of 4,000 parking spaces.