An abandoned high-rise tower in downtown Los Angeles has become a magnet for graffiti artists and parachuting stunts, leaving city officials furious.
“This isn’t art. It’s a crime,” the Los Angeles police chief, Michael Moore, warned on Monday, saying the police were remaining at the site of the half-built development “as the city mobilizes resources to remove the graffiti and fortify the location”.
A social media video that appeared to show someone parachuting off part of the development went viral last week, and was followed by a condemnation from the Los Angeles mayor.
“I’m terrified someone’s going to fall or be pushed,” Karen Bass told NBC Los Angeles. “There are people who are parachuting off of the building.”
Our people remain at the site as the City mobilizes resources to remove the graffiti and fortify the location. All of this in an effort to avoid a tragic fall or other calamity.
— Chief Michel Moore (@LAPDChiefMoore) February 11, 2024
This isn’t art. It’s a crime. https://t.co/taGbxEqSc7
There have already been multiple arrests at the site.
The Los Angeles police department said in a statement that its air support division spotted more than a dozen people trespassing in the building after midnight on 30 January and “possibly spray-painting”. The group fled by the time officers reached the area, except for two people who police arrested on a trespassing charge.
Days later officers responded to a vandalism call for people reportedly spray-painting on the building’s 30th floor. They fled when law enforcement officials arrived. That call ultimately resulted in a traffic citation.
Detectives are continuing to investigate in hopes of making arrests, according to an LAPD statement.
The police department said officers were working with Oceanwide Plaza management to better secure the site and put additional security measures in place.
The site is located just across from the Crypto.com Arena, where this year’s Grammy awards were held on 4 February.
The Los Angeles police were providing security “in an effort to avoid a tragic fall or other calamity”, Moore wrote on X on Monday.
The partially built $1bn Oceanwide Plaza development has been in limbo since 2019, when its Chinese developer announced construction on the site was “temporarily on hold”, citing financial problems.
What was once expected to be Los Angeles’s tallest residential tower, with 500 high-end condos, a hotel, and retail and dining spaces, is now drawing comparisons to famous “ghost towers” in Venezuela, Thailand and North Korea.
“Taggers have a knack for highlighting forgotten urban space,” the Los Angeles Times art and design critic Carolina Miranda wrote this week, praising “the daring nature of the graffiti” while noting that the situation was likely to feed “rightwing narratives about failing cities”.
Hyperallergenic, an art and design site, reported that dozens of artists had tagged at least 27 floors of the abandoned tower, and that at least one of the artists said they had been inspired by a similar transformation of an abandoned tower in Miami during Art Basel.
“This building has needed love for years,” one artist told Hyperallergenic. “If the owners aren’t doing anything about it, the streets of LA are happy to make something out of it.”
“With all due respect, shit’s abandoned, doing nothing,” another said, saying that graffiti artists were willing to use the building as a canvas if the developer could not “finish the job”.
Local officials are blaming Oceanwide’s developer for not securing its construction site properly, and calling on the developer to pay the city back for its current security costs.
“I guarantee you tragedy will take place there if that place is not boarded up quickly,” Bass told NBC Los Angeles. “New fences will be put up, but it’ll take a few days. The owner should reimburse the city for every dime.”
