Next Century Plans $2B of Mixed Uses at Hotel Site

[IMGCAP(1)]CENTURY CITY, CA-A partnership of Los Angeles-based real estate investor Michael Rosenfeld’s Next Century Associates and an entity of the D.E. Shaw Group has unveiled plans for a $2 billion mixed-use project on the site of the Century Plaza hotel. The project would create more than 1.4 million square feet of new development in the form of a 240-room hotel and 163 hotel residences, 130 luxury condos, 100,000 square feet of office space and 106,000 square feet of retail shops and restaurants, a spa and a fitness center.

The developers would raze the Century Plaza to make way for the new construction, which would be developed on the 5.75-acre Century Plaza hotel site at 2025 Avenue of the Stars. Plans call for the property to continue to operate as a Hyatt Regency hotel.

A joint venture of Next Century and the D. E. Shaw group, which is a global investment firm with its US headquarters in New York City, bought the 726-room Century Plaza hotel in May this year from Orange County-based Sunstone Hotel Investors for $366.5 million. The developers estimate that securing entitlements for the project would take about three years, meaning that construction would be completed at a time by which the commercial real estate markets are expected to have recovered.

[IMGCAP(2)]The project design calls for two 50-story towers rising from a grand plaza, with water features, gardens and public art. One would be a mixed-use tower incorporating the 240-room five-star hotel and 163 for-sale condominiums, plus the 100,000 square feet of office space. The other would be a residential tower with 130 for-sale condominiums. The project would include 2,080 parking spaces.

Rosenfeld, who is managing partner of Next Century Associates, points out that the project will be LEED Silver certified, designed with green roofs and environmentally sensitive building materials, and will conform to City of Los Angeles goals for green design and sustainability. The new space will connect with more than 14 million square feet of existing office, retail and residential development, he adds. Francis Cappello, a senior vice president in the D.E. Shaw Group’s real estate unit, comments that the project “demonstrates our high degree of confidence in the City of Los Angeles” despite today’s economic uncertainty.

The project is being designed by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, led by senior design partner Henry Cobb, who designed the US Bank Building in Downtown LA, the tallest building in Los Angeles, with the landscape plan and gardens being designed by Ken Smith Landscape Architecture.