

Another bust-era project is alive and well and passed the City Council today: the long-planned redevelopment of Century City's crescent-shaped Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel won unanimous approval this very morning. Developer Next Century Associates plans to put up two residential towers designed by Pei Cobb Freed, add a 100,000-square-foot retail and restaurant plaza, renovate the 1966 hotel, and create more than two acres of public open space on the six-acre site. The hotel will end up with 394 rooms and suites and 63 "luxury" condos (Marmol Radziner is handling preservation work). The towers--a late-in-the-game addition to prevent demolition of the Minoru Yamasaki-designed hotel--will each be 46 stories and have a combined 290 units. The compromise that saved the hotel was so successful that the project "received universal support with no public opposition," according to a press release.

Two more tall towers in Century City is pretty interesting, but the most compelling part of this project is the public space (Rios Clementi Hale is the landscape architect), which will extend out to Avenue of the Stars in an attempt to make notoriously-un-pedestrian-friendly CC a little more pedestrian-friendly. The plans also incorporate a proposed future station for the Purple Line extension (that's the extremely controversial one that'll send the route under Beverly Hills High).

Construction is set to start in early 2014.

· Century Plaza Double Towers Project Begins Fresh Approvals [Curbed LA]