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Los Angeles

Relevant moves ahead on plan for Morrison Hotel makeover in DTLA

Makeover calls for 444 hotel rooms and 136 resi units for property made famous on Doors’ album cover

American rock band The Doors in front of a rendering of the Morrison Hotel project at 1246 S. Hope St., Los Angeles (SHoP Architects, APA-Agency for the Performing Arts-management, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
American rock band The Doors in front of a rendering of the Morrison Hotel project at 1246 S. Hope St., Los Angeles (SHoP Architects, APA-Agency for the Performing Arts-management, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

The rundown Morrison Hotel of the Doors’ fame may soon break on through to the other side.

Los Angeles city planners have released a draft environmental impact report on the Morrison Project, a plan to restore the century-old Downtown hotel featured on one of the band’s album covers as the linchpin for a new hotel tower and residential high-rise complex with shops and restaurants, Urbanize Los Angeles reported.

Hollywood-based Relevant Group plans to revive the shuttered Morrison Hotel at 1246 S. Hope St. from a longtime single-room-occupancy apartment building as boutique. The hotel was built in 1914 and has been vacant since 2008.

The developer wants to build a new, new 15-story, 190-foot-tall expansion to the east, creating a hotel with 444 guest rooms.

Plans also call for the construction of a 25-story, 325-foot-tall high-rise on a site located directly north of the Morrison Hotel featuring 136 residential units atop ground-floor shops and restaurants.

Parking for 222 vehicles would be located in three levels below the new construction.

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SHoP Architects, based in New York, has designed the mixed-use development at Hope Street and Pico Boulevard, in the South Park area a few blocks east of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

A large courtyard would anchor the Hope Street side, surrounded by 15,500 square feet of shops, restaurants, galleries, and museum space. The project also calls for landscaped outdoor decks on the podiums and rooftops of the hotel and condominium towers.

Based on a timeline included in the environmental study, the Morrison Project is expected to be built in 36 months, beginning in 2022 and ending in 2024.

It was in1969 that the Doors’ Ray Manzarek and his wife spotted the down-at-the-heels Morrison Hotel, and thought it would make a perfect cover. When the hotel clerk barred Jim Morrison and the band from coming inside, they waited till he was called away from his desk. Then they rushed in and rock photographer Henry Diltz got the band-behind-the-window shot. The Morrison Hotel album was released in 1970.

On the flip side was the original Hard Rock Cafe, a dive bar at 300 E. 5th St. in Skid Row, where the band went to tip a few after the photo. It would serve as the namesake for a global business enterprise.

The Relevant Group, known for its Hollywood hotel empire, has set its sights on Downtown, where it has several apartment towers in the works, including a 19-story, 329-unit complex on Olive Street.

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DowntownMixed-useRelevant GroupSkid RowSouth Park