'Graffiti Towers' in DTLA undergo major cleanup work

With that, we want to get you caught up with what Stu Middell is flying over right now. I'm going to bring up his live picture. Let's show it to you. This is Sky Fox in downtown Los Angeles. You can make out the graffiti towers, and there is a big to-do with the graffiti towers today. Stu, what can you tell us? Well, I can tell you that officially they're saying that it is clean. Now, you know, I like to nitpick. That's my thing. You can see it right there. There are a couple of spots. Possibly those are windows that are going to have to be replaced because as I understand it, a lot of this graffiti, not a lot, but some of the graffiti was actually etched in and then they painted over the etching. So there might be some that still need work. What are we talking about? Well, we call them graffiti towers. I like to call them tagger towers. But the official real name of this is Oceanwide, and this is the Oceanwide Plaza, downtown Los Angeles. If you guys haven't been watching, well, it's been here for quite some time, Quite an outstanding building, and just everything about it. Not just the three towers, but there's actually going to be a mall built on the bottom portion. We'll show you some of that right now, right off of Figueroa. Yes, it's right across the street from Crypto and LA Live, and this is one of the pieces that they've been talking about to bring back Los Angeles, downtown Los Angeles, make it rival New York, Times Square. I don't know about that. I do know I am very proud of my city, and I do want all this to succeed. They're talking about condos. Originally, there was supposed to be a hotel and condos. Not really sure because it bounces around depending upon where you look on what is what, but there are definitely going to be homes for sale and then also a hotel out here. This project, well, it's been sitting abandoned for quite some time. They did finally have a group that came in, picked it up. I think the number was, hang on, Marla, maybe you can help me out with that one. with the numbers but they did pick it up for a reasonable price but they still have to dump in like I think it was like 850 million dollars to get this thing done so it is far from finished but they are talking about having it done by the 2028 which also is interesting because everything is 2028 lately which makes me wonder. Is there anything after 2028? But they have done quite a bit of work. There is still a little bit of graffiti. Is the construction going to start back up? The answer is yes. The question is when, because the first portion of the purchase was you had to clean all the graffiti off of it. I think they've accomplished that. So now we've got to wait for construction crews to start showing back up and the work to continue. Marla? Well, it looks a lot better or they look a lot better than it did just a couple of months ago. We'll give them that. I'm curious. That wasn't new tagging that you originally showed, was it? You know what? I hope not. I hope not. Believe me, I'm all about street art, but I hope they aren't coming back in here and tagging or trying to. I know the security is definitely way up in the towers now, now that they're doing the cleaning and somebody actually owns it. When it was sitting more abandoned, it was open. Pretty much to anybody that wanted to make the effort to get inside there. And I don't, you know, it is pretty famous. They actually had a tightrope walker that was online that actually did the tightrope between those two buildings right there. Also, other people had been base jumping off of this building. It has, you know, it is what it is. It's downtown. It's pretty obvious. So you know it's a target. But right now? Hopefully, they're going to get it done. Hopefully, it's going to be reasonably priced. I wouldn't mind living here, but at any rate, I don't think I could afford it, but it is pretty impressive, and I just wanted to get open, the mall to open up down there so we can start having just more stuff in downtown, especially over by LA Live, but there's some more of that graffiti right there. You know, Marla, I'm seeing that there are windows that they might actually have to replace, which would make sense because we'll keep an eye on it. Yeah, I'm reading up on this and they say that the majority of the work is done. It's about 60 percent done, which means there's 40 percent still to go. So, yes, I would assume that those windows would be replaced. The developer is investing about eight hundred fifty million. To finish this project, and to your point, 2028, the big year for the Olympics, they say that the exterior work will be done by the LA 28 Olympics in the summertime, but the occupancy of the building will not happen until late 2028, after the Olympics have come and gone. In other words, it just needs to look pretty for the Olympics, not necessarily ready for business. Right? That's what I'm getting from that. Right. Just look good. Don't be functional. Just look good. Just look good in downtown. That's right. Okay. It is what it is, but I am very excited. I was happy to hear that somebody actually had purchased it. It has been sitting here for quite some time. I love downtown. I lived in the buildings right next door. I know it's not about me, but we watched the Moxy Hotel being built. from my window. I love downtown. I love downtown living. And this was just so disappointing to see it just sitting idle for so long. And then when the tagging happened, that was, you know, it kind of pulled on me both ways because I do love street art. And I do love that, you know, they did something, you know, the people did something with the building. But I also didn't like the fact that it was sitting abandoned for so long. But right now, we're moving in the right direction. And hopefully, it will become just another iconic building in our downtown skyline. Let's hope so. Now, this is just part of the, it will be all part of its history in the history books eventually. So, Stu Mundell and crew up in Skyfox on this Tuesday, November 10th. Thank you so much. No, thank you, Marla. Okay, we'll be checking back with you soon.