The City of West Hollywood will host a community meeting with the architect of the proposed Belltower project on Sunset Boulevard on Dec. 19.
The meeting, which will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m., will be at the community meeting room at the West Hollywood Library, 625 N. San Vicente Blvd. Members of the city’s Community Development staff will be there.
The three-sided, 72-foot tall Belltower structure is planned for the old Tower Records overflow parking lot (which the city now owns), just east of the Sunset Boulevard-Horn Avenue-Holloway Drive intersection. It will have digital screens on two sides that will feature advertisements 75% of the time and is recommended to offer special digital art displays the other 25% of the time.
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) would curate the digital art displayed on the screens, with the city’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission having final approval over all the art displayed.
Conceived by Orange Barrel Media in conjunction with Los Angeles-based architect Tom Wiscombe, after winning a city-sponsored competition, the proposed “Belltower” would be built in three vertical panels of perforated, reinforced aluminum connected via a skeletal frame. The public would be able to walk inside the space between the three vertical panels.
A plaza area is planned around the “Belltower.” Five parking spaces will be eliminated to create the plaza.
The project has drawn criticism from residents of the West Hollywood Heights neighborhood, who object to the loss of parking spaces, its size and what Elyse Eisenberg, chair of the WeHo Heights Neighborhood Association, describes as its “visual blight” and “audio blight.”
I live right above this planned monstrosity. My apartment is already so light even with the lights out because of streetlights on N.Sherbourne Drive. This digital monster is going to keep me up even more so. I manage our apartment building and our tenants will loose their view even more so because the city already allowed a huge billboard in front of our building. It feels like the city is gettin a cutback of some sort because the digital billboard should never be approved.
This is so sad for any resident or anyone who wants to go to this meeting and participate. It’s scheduled for December 19th which is the week of the Hannakuh holidays and it’s 4 days before Christmas and it’s 5 days before Kwaanza and it’s just before New Year’s eve. Most people have already bought plane tickets, cruise tickets and booked hotel rooms for these 4 major holidays and cannot cancel or change their plans. I already emailed the city council and the two planners involved to ask if it can be moved and re-scheduled for sometime in January 2018.… Read more »