Wilshire Boulevard

Work is underway on a $105-million apartment and retail development at the crossroads of two major Los Angeles thoroughfares, Wilshire Boulevard and La Brea Avenue. The six-story complex called Wilshire at La Brea is being erected by San Francisco apartment developer BRE Properties. It will house 480 residential units and fill the block at the southeast corner of the intersection. “Through careful planning, this project comes to market at the right time and provides much-needed housing in an area already rich with valuable amenities and easy access to mass transit,” BRE Vice President John Selindh said.

Beverly Hills police have released new video showing a BMW that tried to ram a man on a bicycle into a metal trash bin. Since April 3, police have been looking for the driver of a newer model, white BMW 328i that was captured on video hitting the bicyclist in an alley of the 9000 block of Wilshire Boulevard. The new video shows higher quality images of the vehicle and its driver. Police said it appears the driver deliberately aimed his car at the bicyclist. Authorities consider the hit-and-run to be a road rage-type incident and are seeking the driver on suspicion of attempted murder.

LOS ANGELES -- Michael Govan

Beverly Hills police said a BMW driver intentionally hit a cyclist earlier this month and promised to arrest the person on suspicion of attempted murder if they can find him. A video shows the man steering his car into a bicyclist, crushing him against a metal trash bin. "The driver intentionally rammed the bicyclist with his vehicle, pinning him to a metal rolling trash bin," the Beverly Hills Police Department said in a statement....

I enjoyed reading Leon Whiteson's excellent article regarding the history and development of Wilshire Boulevard ("Boulevard of Dreams," Aug. 31). I do, however, take exception to architect Scott Johnson's misguided comment: "And some of the newer buildings--such as the Wilshire Courtyard complex . . . follow an inappropriate suburban model in their design, detracting from the street's urban continuity." The Courtyard is the single most successful major office development to be constructed along the boulevard in at least a decade.

We think of Wilshire Boulevard as synonymous with Los Angeles - as our Main Street. But Wilshire has always stood apart from the city it slices through. It is denser and more urbane, its architecture more vertical. No, rather than act as a perfect symbol of Los Angeles, Wilshire has operated as a proving ground for new ideas about architecture, commerce, transportation and urbanism in Southern California. For nearly a century Wilshire has been L.A.'s boulevard of prototypes, a string of hypotheses 16 miles long.

Third in a series of photo essays by Cassy Cohen Some consider Wilshire Boulevard the ultimate in drive-in art museums or, to be more precise, drive-by museums. The street abounds with a lively mixture of classic and avant-garde sculpture that has a little something for everyone.

The stretch of Wilshire Boulevard between downtown and the Miracle Mile was for decades a center of commerce, with buildings once occupied by such business powerhouses as Union Bank, Texaco, IBM and Getty Oil. In more recent years, it's been transformed into a residential hub, with a construction boom of mid-rise condo and luxury apartment buildings. Yet for all of the momentum -- more than two dozen residential developments either have been completed or proposed for the corridor -- a backlash is now gaining steam, and it's centered on a mid-century former savings and loan building at Wilshire and La Brea Avenue.

Cadillac Fairview/California, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Canadian firm known as the largest publicly held real estate development company in North America, has started work on a $90-million office tower at Wilshire and San Vicente boulevards in Los Angeles. When completed in mid-1986, the 22-story structure will be the Toronto-based Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd.'s U. S. western region headquarters. Designed by The Luckman Partnership Inc.

Whether the big new wing at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is seen as a wild Art Deco put-on or an improvement that at last allows LACMA to function as a decent museum--and it's possible to see this mixed-up building both ways--there's no question that the Los Angeles cultural Establishment blew a $35-million chance to transform its worst mistake of the 1960s into an exalted work of architectural art.

Beverly Hills police are seeking the public's help in tracking down the driver of a BMW who is captured on video steering his car into a bicyclist, crushing him against a metal trash bin. Police said they consider the hit-and-run to be a road rage-type incident and are seeking the driver on suspicion of attempted murder. Since April 3, police have been looking for the driver of a newer model, white BMW 328i that was captured on video hitting bicyclist in an alley in the 9000 block of Wilshire Boulevard.

In 2001, I wrote a story for the Los Angeles Times about April 24, the annual Armenian Day of Remembrance, that had this lead: "The Armenian genocide. " That was it, the entire first paragraph. I was proud of it because it didn't say "the alleged genocide" or "what the Armenians consider a genocide. " It just called the 1915 massacre of a million Armenians what it was, even though the U.S. government - in deference to official Turkish denials and our air bases in Turkey - won't use the word.

Some brought children. Some brought friends. Alden Delos Santos brought Chihuahuas. Delos Santos, 41, carried his puppies Bianco and Sriracha in a front pack as he joined as many as 150,000 other bicycle riders in the  sixth and biggest CicLAvia, a celebration of cycling, walking, in-line skating, skateboarding, scootering and any other form of transportation that requires no motor. Join us at 9 a.m. as we discuss the burgeoning cycling event with Times reporter Samantha Schaefer.

Will the Academy's big bubble pop before it has a chance to be built? Italian architect Renzo Piano, Los Angeles architect Zoltan Pali and officials from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled preliminary designs Thursday for a $300-million film museum at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. The architectural centerpiece of the 290,000-square-foot complex, just west of the campus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, would be a giant glass-enclosed dome, which Piano refers to as the "sphere" and the "soap bubble.

Re "It all begins on Wilshire," March 24 I have always been fascinated by Wilshire Boulevard, the great thoroughfare analyzed by Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne. While I had a job on Wilshire near Vermont Avenue as a twentysomething in the early 1970s, I found the area to be of great interest. I spent entire lunch hours roaming through the elegant Bullocks Wilshire as well as the nearby I. Magnin & Co. department store (both now sadly defunct). I spent many happy hours at Lafayette Park and its little branch library.

We think of Wilshire Boulevard as synonymous with Los Angeles - as our Main Street. But Wilshire has always stood apart from the city it slices through. It is denser and more urbane, its architecture more vertical. No, rather than act as a perfect symbol of Los Angeles, Wilshire has operated as a proving ground for new ideas about architecture, commerce, transportation and urbanism in Southern California. For nearly a century Wilshire has been L.A.'s boulevard of prototypes, a string of hypotheses 16 miles long.

The doors of the old department store are opening once again to anxious patrons. The owners of another old department store building are drawing grand dreams for its future. And down the street, the whine of an electric saw signals yet another renovation. A few more people are strolling along Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile district, maybe stopping in Johnie's for a cup of coffee or lingering by the statue of the prehistoric mom mired in the La Brea tar pits.

The eight statues that stand guard outside the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple have made it a distinctive part of Wilshire Boulevard for more than 30 years. But soon after an Easter program, the temple--which housed National Guard troops during the 1992 riots and has been used for funerals of police officers--will be fenced off and closed.

A long-awaited luxury condominium tower developed by giant United Arab Emirates real estate company Emaar Properties has opened near the Los Angeles Country Club. Emaar Properties bought the 22-story Beverly West tower at Wilshire Boulevard and Comstock Avenue for $65 million in 2007 while it was under construction by a previous developer. The housing market crashed soon after in the economic downturn. Mohamed Alabbar, chairman of Emaar, kept the property off the market until earlier this year, said Dario De Luca, president of the company's Los Angeles operations.