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Gallery: Downtown's Grand Park Opens
Downtown's Grand Park opened yesterday in the heart of the city's civic center downtown in an invite-only event that included public officials from the city and county, as well as billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad.
The event yesterday was an invite-only event but the park will formally open to the public tomorrow with a dance celebration that we hope looks exactly like this:
The park was originally supposed to close at dusk every night, but its hours were extended until 10 pm (we're guessing to keep the homeless and Occupiers from setting up camp).
The revamped park is supposed to be the first piece of a much bigger development plan for downtown. City and county officials told the Los Angeles Times that they eventually expect to raze the nearby Stanley Mosk Courthouse and the county Hall of Administration that will make way for more park space and private development downtown. The project—originally spearheaded by Broad over a decade ago—was supposed to bring luxury condos, 5-star hotels and fancy retail shops to the civic center before the economy went bust.
But Related Cos., the developer on the project, put a $50-million down payment on the park. That's right—this isn't a taxpayer-funded public park.
Here's a video of the dance taken by Militant Angeleno:
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