The Music Center, in partnership with the County of Los Angeles, developed a plan to provide an enhanced pedestrian environment for Grand Avenue and the Music Center. The goal of the project was to create a more welcoming and accessible space for both the community and visitors to Down Town Los Angeles. The various elements of the project make the street and the public spaces more pedestrian friendly and attractive. A major goal of the revitalization is to increase the number and diversity of patrons and visitors to the Music Center.

The new streetscape better accommodates the increased pedestrian traffic generated by the Cathedral and Disney Hall. It provides an additional 12 to 30 feet in sidewalk width along the frontage of the Music Center as well as new plantings, street furniture, and art installations. The syncopated paving and planting patterns create a “non-system system” that allows the trees to be located amidst a wide array of existing local conditions such as curb cuts, existing building massing, and the lack of regularity in the previously existing environment at street level.

Rios Clementi Hale also designed the new Grand Park which runs west to east between Grand Ave and Los Angeles City Hall. The challenge here was to transform a largely overlooked open space into a landmark urban park that would become a destination for residents and visitors of the Los Angeles region. The goal was to provide a unifying place that would appeal to the region’s diverse communities, as well as to visitors from around the world, and to complement visits to downtown LA’s neighboring cultural and civic landmarks.

These projects required close coordination with a complex institutional and public agency client group, multiple governing County and City bodies, and numerous technical consultants.