Exploiting Downtown's Unused Air Rights

By Eric Richardson
Published: Monday, January 16, 2006, at 04:12PM

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The LA Business Journal is running a story about Downtown air rights (free, but registration required) that talks of ideas to sell the Convention Center’s unused height entitlements to nearby housing developers.

The concept involves taking square footage that could have – but was not – built on a piece of property and transferring it to other parcels with tighter zoning restrictions. In the case of the Convention Center – a low slung complex spread out on 20 acres – there are 4.3 million square feet of excess development under existing zoning.

The result: Taller condo buildings downtown. A building’s height now is capped by a formula based on the size of its lot. But developers can add stories to their buildings by buying the air rights from nearby parcels.

I’m wholeheartedly in favor of this sort of thing. The taller the better in my opinion. As Richard Meruelo is quoted as saying in this week’s Downtown News

From a street perspective, whether you are standing next to a six-story building or a 60-story building you don’t notice the difference. It’s the first 30 feet that you notice. After that it could hit the moon.

LABJ article spotted at LA Observed.



Comments

1
thedaniel writes:

I am reminded of Eric Garcetti’s quote re his Holly Trolley, something like: “Density will again be our ally”.

# on Jan.17.2006 AT 11:25 AM
2
Tim Quinn writes:

Think shadows

# on Jan.17.2006 AT 12:04 PM
3
Eric Richardson writes:

Tim: But I think the point is that aside from the few minutes around noon, a 30-story building doesn’t cast a significantly different street-level shadow than say a 5- or 6-story building. If you’re going to get the shadows either way, why not get the taller building out of it?

# on Jan.17.2006 AT 02:47 PM
4
Tim Quinn writes:

I am hugely in favor of more density, just intuitive, honestly. But NIMBYS wil complain about losing sunshine to tall buildings. A 30 story building casts a 30 story shadow or more (along the ground) a six story building doesn’t. This would be in the morning or evening.

Great work and congrats on the recognition.

# on Jan.17.2006 AT 03:06 PM
5
Eric Richardson writes:

Tim: But in a situation where you have buildings on both sides of the street, all you really care about is whether the shadow cast is long enough to reach the other side and start climbing the other building. At that point all a taller building does is make a shadow that climbs higher up the other building. Sure, a 30-story building casts a different shadow on an adjacent park or other open space, but a shadow is only 30-stories tall until it hits something and goes up.

# on Jan.17.2006 AT 03:55 PM

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