The aging Wilshire Grand hotel and adjoining offices in downtown Los Angeles would be demolished and replaced with a $1-billion hotel, office and retail complex under a plan by one of South Korea's largest business conglomerates.
The proposal is unexpected at a time when builders are backing away from big projects, and when the market for office space and condominiums has softened considerably because of the recession.
At 1.8 million square feet, the project is also a testament to the rising clout of L.A.'s Korean community, the largest outside of Seoul.
"This will be an icon of the Korean community for Los Angeles," said Yang Ho Cho, the chairman of Korean Air, which is developing the project.
Korean Air is the flagship company for Hanjin Group, which has $20 billion in annual revenue from its interests in land, sea and air transportation as well as construction, heavy industry, finance and information services.
Hanjin's involvement raises the project to a new level, marking the first time that a South Korean developer has engaged in an endeavor of this magnitude. The move is particularly significant because the company is what South Koreans call a chaebol, one of the family-owned conglomerates that dominate the nation's economy.
"This is on a bigger scale and it shows the growing clout" of Korean and Korean American investors, said Kyeyoung Park, associate professor of anthropology at UCLA's Center for Korean Studies.
Plans for the project, announced Thursday, call for replacing the 1950s-era Wilshire Grand -- located at Figueroa Street and Wilshire Boulevard -- with a luxurious 40-story hotel with as many as 700 rooms and topped by several floors of condominiums.
Next door would be an even taller building, a sleek 60-story tower with 1.1 million square feet of rentable office space. At ground level would be shops, a landscaped park and a public plaza.
It would be the first major high-rise office building constructed in L.A. since 1992.
The airline has hired Thomas Properties Group, one of the city's best-known developers, to oversee the project.
"It's amazing that anybody has the capacity to engage in new construction right now," said City Councilwoman Jan Perry, who is familiar with the proposal and supports it so far. "I'm looking forward to engaging in the process to move it forward."
But for those familiar with Korean Air, the latest project is not surprising and is in keeping with its roots as a chaebol.
