What the Elbtower is to Hamburg and the Lamarr is to Vienna, the Oceanwide Towers are to Los Angeles. Plans for the massive project were presented in 2015: three towers would provide space for 500 luxury apartments and a five-star hotel – in a central location opposite the LA Lakers basketball hall and costing a billion dollars (930 million euros). ). The construction company is a Chinese company. Cooling Sino-American relations under then-US President Donald Trump and the overheating Chinese property market led to a halt in construction in 2019.
Since then, the towers have become a symbol of the housing crisis in the Californian metropolis. Unfinished towers take up valuable space. Additionally, there is a security risk when there are paragliders and graffiti sprayers at the construction site of the three towers, which were planned to be 49 or 40 stories high – and thieves who have stolen all the copper cabling.
APA/AFP/Getty Images/Mario Tama The view from the towers is impressive
To add insult to injury, there is ridicule
With the Grammy Awards taking place earlier this month, the damage was compounded by ridicule as images of the alleged graffiti-painted luxury towers spread across the world. The city administration finally lost patience. She recently gave construction company Oceanwide Holdings a deadline of Sunday to effectively secure the site and remove the graffiti.
APA/AFP/Getty Images/Mario Tama View of other skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles
However, the chances of this happening are minimal, as the “Financial Times” reported on Saturday. According to the report, as China's property market cooled, Oceanwide Holdings was removed from the Hang Seng Index, Hong Kong's benchmark index for mid-sized companies, in 2017. Two years later, construction was fully completed. interrupted – the reason is: the construction companies complained that Oceanwide was no longer paying the bills. The next blow came at the beginning of January this year: the controlling company announced that it would liquidate the company.
AP/Damian Dovarganes Many sprayers have “immortalized” themselves, highlighting glass facades
The city runs the risk of bearing the costs
The city of Los Angeles threatens to bear the costs – security costs for the construction site alone are estimated at $3.8 million. And it's highly doubtful that Los Angeles will be any more successful in recovering those costs from Oceanwide.
It is unclear whether another real estate group will be found to take over the failed project. According to the Financial Times, there are already calls for the unfinished towers to be used to alleviate the housing crisis – thousands of homeless people live just two miles further west. But it would take years to complete and adapt to new needs – and there would likely be great resistance from residents to the construction of thousands of units of social housing in the middle of a major shopping and entertainment district.