Design
Originally envisioned as two towers, the taller of which would have been 380 m tall, the complex is now a single 1100 ft, 73-story tower consisting of the 889-room InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown hotel, retail, observation deck and office space. The Los Angeles–based architectural firm, A.C. Martin Partners, oversaw the project and prepared the current design. They took over from Thomas Properties, which managed the early proposals, but which was replaced when the owners became dissatisfied with their approach.
A distinctive feature of the building is its sail-shaped crown which is illuminated with LED lighting at night.[21][22] The giant LED configuration in the crown has displayed the Korean Air logo (a subsidiary of Hanjin, owner of the Wilshire Grand Center), the Intercontinental Hotel logo, operator of the tower's hotel, LA Rams logo,[23] and LA28's colors.[24] The LED lighting has a 60-hertz refresh rate, with any color, to do high-speed, pulsating[25] color light shows.[26] The crown has two street level LED 42 by 60 feet displays, of 250 million pixels each, nearly a fifth of a mile up in the sky, atop Los Angeles' tallest building, and the building itself is also covered in roughly 2.5 miles of LEDs running up and down the building’s spine.[27][28][29]
The tower will spearhead part of a new planned light and sign district that will extend along the Figueroa Corridor down to L.A. Live. According to recent renderings, it is unclear however to what extent LED lighting and advertising will be applied.[14] Lead designer David C. Martin said that the spire and the entire exterior skin of the tower will be filled with programmable LED lighting.[30] The spire weighs 200,000 lb and adds 294 feet in height to the building.[31]
The skyscraper is a distinctive part of the Los Angeles skyline, as it is the first building over 75 feet tall built since 1974 to not feature a "flat roof" design, an integral part of buildings in Los Angeles today.[32] The pattern of buildings in Los Angeles to feature these "flat roofs" was the result of a 1974 fire ordinance which required all tall buildings in the city to include rooftop helipads in response to the Joelma Fire in São Paulo, Brazil, in which helicopters could not be used to effect rescues from the rooftop of the building because of the lack of a landing spot, and could otherwise have prevented many deaths.[33] The Wilshire Grand was granted an exception by the Los Angeles City Fire Department however, as the building includes advances in fire safety and building technology (such as a reinforced concrete central core) which exceeds the city's current fire code. The building nevertheless has a helipad, but it is smaller than the uniform standard used in the city, and, like all helipads, can only be used in emergencies. The helipad is still big enough for a smaller rescue or fire helicopter to land onto.
The elevators in Wilshire Grand Center are supplied by Otis Elevator Company. The four double-deck express cars servicing the hotel's main lobby on the 70th floor travel at 1600 ft/min.[34]
