Wilshire Grand finally breaks ground
1After a long wait, the highly anticipated $1.1 billion?Wilshire Grand?hotel development?in Downtown Los Angeles will begin construction on February 15. When it does, it will simultaneously break theGuinness Book of World Records?for the longest continuous concrete pour. The event will take place over a weekend with a ground breaking and record-breaking ceremony.
To break the world record, developers will pour 2,120 truckloads, or 21,000 cubic yards, of concrete to form the building’s foundation. In total, the concrete for the foundation will weigh 82 million pounds.
At the?recent?Downtown?Los Angeles: Opportunity Knocks?conference,?Chris Martin, the CEO of?AC Martin Development?and?Martin Project Management?who is leading the development project, revealed details about the hotel. Once complete, the hotel will be the largest structure in the Western US at 73 stories and 1,100 feet tall. It will feature 900 hotel rooms as well as retail and office space.
The building layout was one of the most interesting details of the development revealed by Martin. The hotel lobby will be on the top floor. To reach the lobby, guests will take a 40 to 50 second elevator ride to the top story. ?We figured guests would want to get to the common areas on the top floors, so we thought, why not take them right there,? said Martin at the event.
Martin and?Y.H. Cho, chairman and CEO of?Korean Air?will join city leaders and the Guinness Book adjudicator for the ground-breaking ceremony, which will begin with a celebratory parade led by the?USC?marching band.