Frank Gehry-designed Hotel Tower Coming to Santa Monica

Image: Rendering courtesy Gehry Partners, LLP

Renowned architect Frank Gehry is designing a 22-story hotel town in Santa Monica that will feature 125 rooms and 22 condominiums. The complex will also include two stories of shops and restaurants, and there will be a new 36,000-square-foot art museum next door.

According to the Santa Monica Daily Press, plans were submitted on Thursday for the project, referred to as the “Ocean Avenue Project,” which will be built on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. Along with the hotel, condos and retail/dining space, there will also be a “three-floor subterranean parking garage with 460 spaces.”

The hotel tower will rise 244 feet above the ground and be set back from the street behind the retail/dining area. With “all-white design” that is meant to “play off of other prominent Santa Monica buildings, and attempts to marry an art deco feel with Gehry’s distinctive style.”

This is first building Gehry has designed in his hometown in 25 years. The plans did not include a museum until approximately two years ago.

Jeffrey Worthe, president of Worthe Real Estate Group, one of two groups involved in the development of the Ocean Avenue Project, said, “Built on its own, people will see it. Add the museum and people will come and experience it.”

According to Worthe Real Estate Group, the project is “expected to generate $72.7 million per year in direct and indirect spending, 1,294 jobs during operations and $4 million in new tax revenues to the city.”

The new art museum will consist of two landmarked structures and a new museum building, designed by Gehry, immediately north of the Ocean Avenue Project. There are also plans to construct a separate apartment building to “meet the project’s affordable housing requirement and replace 19 rent-controlled units that will be lost to the development.”

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