Enough with the yuppies — this new Bunker Hill apartment building is for grown-ups.It's not that Related Cos. is trying to scare off young professionals who are flocking to downtown Los Angeles. It's just that it seems as if every other developer is trying to woo urban hipsters. So the New York development firm is targeting older residents for its $120-million luxury high-rise next door to the new Broad museum on Grand Avenue.The Emerson, as it is known, "is for a more mature audience," said Gino Canori of Related. "Somebody who wants to come home to a quiet place."
Bunker Hill has indeed remained a quiet corner during downtown's renaissance over the last several years. The flood of new bars, restaurants, apartments and stores has mostly bypassed the neighborhood known for corporate office buildings and the arts, which remain a defining feature.When the Broad museum opens next year, it will join Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Music Center among the city's elite cultural institutions, bolstering Bunker Hill's image as downtown's "high brow" district.Although others prefer to live close to the basketball, hockey and pop music events happening in downtown's burgeoning South Park neighborhood, residents of the Emerson are likely to have more classic tastes, said Canori, a senior vice president at Related.
With that in mind, Related has constructed a sleek 19-story tower overlooking the Broad and Disney Hall with views beyond to the modernist Department of Water and Power headquarters and the Hollywood sign.Outside the front door are a grass courtyard and weathered, century-old olive trees brought in to lend a sense of permanence. On the first floor will be an upmarket restaurant and bar operated by Italian chef Agostino Sciandri, who may cater meals for tenants.Two high-profile American chefs, Tim Hollingsworth and Bill Chai, will have their own upscale restaurant a few paces away at the Broad.Hal Bastian, a consultant on downtown Los Angeles revitalization, said he hopes the restaurants, the Broad and the Emerson will add a missing jolt of life to Grand Avenue after dark and on weekends."Heretofore the neighborhood has been an office hub and shut down in the evenings," Bastian said.
