Jeffrey Fish wants condo buyers to swim suspended above the DTLA skyline

Rendering of the proposed tower at the corner of Hill and 5th Streets (Credit: CallisonRTKL via L.A. Times)
Rendering of the proposed tower at the corner of Hill and 5th Streets (Credit: CallisonRTKL via L.A. Times)

As the Wilshire Grand nears completion, developer Jeffrey Fish wants his own landmark in the L.A. skyline: cantilevered pools.

The developer recently filed plans with the city for an L-shaped, 60-story condo tower that would rise in an empty lot adjacent to the Pershing Square Building at 448 Hill Street. The kicker? Some units would have pools that extend from the structure and hover above the ground.

“This will be a landmark building unlike anything else seen in California,” Fish said in an email statement to the L.A. Times. He said the project would include a “multi-story open space cut out of the center of the building’s structure.”

There are two versions of the plan: The first envisions a 55-story tower with 11 condos, 200 hotel rooms and an additional 26,500 square feet for commercial tenants, and the second calls for 57 stories, 142 condos and 25,000 square feet of commercial space.

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In both iterations, the structure itself would wrap around the Pershing Square Building to create a “sky lobby” that would light up the center of the building.

“He knocked it out of the park with what he is proposing there,” Cushman & Wakefield’s Mike Condon Jr., who isn’t involved with the project, told the Times.

Nearby, Pershing Square is getting a makeover of its own. The French landscaping firm Agence Ter will be redeveloping the park in a $50 million public-private partnership. The completion date is set to 2019.

Fish, best known for his historical restoration of the building at Fifth and Hill that houses the bar Perch on its roof, has been at odds with the city over his attempt to buy three parcels of Bunker Hill land owned by the defunct CRA. He lost out on one of them when the Colborn School purchased the land underneath its home at 200 South Grand Avenue. [LAT]Cathaleen Chen