LAPD Motor Transport Division + Main Street Parking
New to Downtown L.A.’s developing Gallery Row, John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects’ Main Street Parking + Motor Transport Division building for the Los Angeles Police Department sets a glowing standard for utilitarian civic architecture.
Part of the three-stage master plan for the Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters (2009), spearheaded by an AECOM/Roth + Sheppard joint venture in the city’s redeveloping Downtown, the Main Street Parking + Motor Transport Division is the kind of ancillary project that could sever a neighborhood by virtue of its sheer mass and typically unattractive aesthetic. Anticipating local concerns, the city’s Bureau of Engineering charged John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects (JFAK) to devise a scheme that would both fulfill its need for a secure, rational building as well as illuminate the fragile urban revival.
The historic core of Downtown L.A. is on the upswing. Neglected commercial properties and prewar buildings abandoned during the latter half of the 20th century are being converted into residential lofts and art galleries, and St. Vibiana, the city’s former cathedral, which was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, has been restored and renovated into an elegant event space. Needless to say, the community was less than welcoming when they got wind of the LAPD’s plans to build a vehicular parking and maintenance facility on Main Street, the burgeoning Gallery Row, adjacent to the revamped church.
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