Covid may delay but won’t stop Angels Landing: Developer

It’s possible the pandemic could delay the 1.26 million-square-foot Angels Landing project slated for Downtown Los Angeles, and the $1.2 billion development could run over budget. But it will get completed.

That’s according to Claridge Properties CEO Ricardo Pagan, who discussed the megaproject in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. Claridge is co-developing Angels Landing with Don Peebles’ Peebles Corporation and MacFarlane Partners.

L.A. chose the skyscraper complex proposal from Claridge and its partners in 2017. The design was finalized two years later. Pagan told the outlet the project is “nearly six years away from completion” and that the development team is “going to see it through.”

“The likelihood of this project not happening is zero,” he said.

He called the effects of the pandemic — which has sucked the life out of the L.A. office market — temporary. He added that Angels Landing will be a “beacon” of economic resurgence in Downtown, and for the wider Southern California region.

Angels Landing will rise on the former Angels Knoll Park. Plans call for 180 condominiums, 261 apartments, 509 hotel rooms and 36,000 square feet of commercial space. The tower itself was cut from 1,020 feet to 854 feet.

All three firms in the development team are noted as minority-owned, and the trio plans to earmark 30 percent of development contracts for minority- and women-owned businesses. In 2019, the Peebles Corporation diversity fund launched, with the goal of raising $500 million for projects by minority and women-owned developers.

[LAT] — Dennis Lynch