How One Wilshire feeds into the internet, congestion pricing update and more

On Sunday, June 18, CicLAvia returns with an event in South Los Angeles along Vermont Avenue between Exposition Boulevard to the north and Century Boulevard to the south. The event, which runs from 9am to 4pm, will overlap with Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell’s third annual Juneteenth Celebration and Resource Fair, which features live performances, food trucks and other community activities. community. Participation in the Juneteenth event is free, but requires registration – check it out here: https://mitchell.lacounty.gov/juneteenth2023

For more information on the June 18 CicLAvia event, go here: https://www.ciclavia.org/south_la_june23

Here’s what we’ll be reading this week:

How This Building Powers the Internet”Sometimes buildings don’t seem as important as they are. This is the case of One Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles. At first glance, it’s a generic downtown office building. But that blank facade hides one of the most important pieces of digital infrastructure in the United States. In this video we visit 1 Wilshire Blvd, explain how it works, and chat with Jimenez Lai who wrote a story about the building that explores his outsized role in our digital lives. ” (Steward Hicks – YouTube)

Yes we have more water but some regulations have been extended “Although this winter has significantly improved our water supply situation, underground aquifers and the Colorado River are still at a minimum. And as the weather warms, water usage will also increase, stretching supplies for next year.” . (LAist)

Thousands of local hotel workers move towards a strike: living in Los Angeles is no longer an option “As Los Angeles prepares for a busy summer travel season, plus future tourism events including the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics, and hotel company profits soar, it is critical to ensure workers are fairly compensated and can afford housing,” said Kurt Petersen, co-chair of Unite Here Local 11.” (Los Angeles Times)

The freeway originated in Los Angeles, but it may not always be free to drive “Earlier this month, the Federal Highway Administration gave tentative approval to New York’s first national congestion charging plan, intended to fill financial gaps. Transit officials say the technology to perform a program could be completed within the next year, but opponents have threatened to hinder efforts.…In San Diego, a plan to charge users per mile traveled was killed amid political opposition. And in the Bay Area, transit planners froze a downtown congestion plan after the pandemic emptied the city’s downtown, though another study is underway to charge for the Bay Area’s major highways… .But perhaps nowhere in the United States would it be as consequential as in car-centric Los Angeles, the land of the SigAlert and birthplace of the freeway, where commute times, traffic accidents and gas prices play a role. important in everyday consciousness. The region sprawled out, but no matter how much the road was built, the snarl of traffic reached it at every turn.” (LA Times)

LVMH concedes defeat to the Cheval Blanc hotel project in Beverly Hills “LVMH spent three years submitting architectural plans, studies and analyzes to make sure the first Cheval Blanc hotel in the United States would fit in Beverly Hills. Last November, the 109-room hotel spread across Rodeo Drive, Little Santa Monica Boulevard and Beverly Drive, was approved by the Beverly Hills City Council in a 4-to-1 vote. The council touted that the new development would generate approximately $778 million in open-ended funding for the city over the next 30 years, 26 million dollars in unallocated funds and $2 million to support local arts and culture.” (WWD)

State Farm discontinues new California property insurance policies “The company cited rising construction costs and its ‘rapidly growing disaster exposure.'” (OC register)

San Francisco, New York will have the most empty office space in 2033 San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles top the list of major global cities that will have the most empty office space by 2033, according to a report from Savills Plc. (Bloomberg)

Celebrities have dodged millions in Los Angeles home tax. Meet the Industry That Protects Its Wealth” Even before voters approved the measure, bringing a 4% transfer tax on all property sales over $5 million and 5.5% on sales over $10 million in the city of Los Angeles, lawyers and real estate agents began devising ways to escape It. In the final days of March, luxury homeowners made increasingly desperate attempts to sell their long-standing properties before expiration… For outsiders to the extravagant Los Angeles real estate scene, the numbers didn’t quite add up. Many sellers have reduced the price of their home so low, or added so many luxuries, that it would have been cheaper to simply sell at the original price and pay the tax. And some whose homes were sold before the law went into effect have spent many millions more on charities than the amount saved by avoiding the tax… to protect those fortunes there was a clear answer: ‘the defense of wealth.'” (LA Times)