The L.A. Times print edition featured recently a front page story about this proposed new downtown hotel / office complex.
From the renderings, it looks to TTLA's untrained eyes the crowns of these 40- and 60-story buildings look to be yet another example of the power of Municipal Code Sec. 57.118.12.
That's the 35-year-old insertion titled “Emergency Helicopter Landing Facility."
“Each building," the code reads ,"shall have a rooftop emergency helicopter landing facility in a location approved by the [Fire] Chief.”
The short version of what that means to our city: Flat rooftops on skyscrapers, unlike contemporary towers built in places such as Shanghai, Dubai, and London.
Here is the story TTLA wrote on this topic last summer, for another outlet.
Illustration copyright and courtesy Sketch Winters, 2007
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There is nothing wrong with flat roofs is there?
I feel like I understand LA-set action movies a bit better now. It's the hack Hollywood writers who keep insisting on the helicopters chase scenes, it's the municipal code!