Ambassador Hotel: Slowly but surely

**James** · #1 (**permalink**) 01-10-2006, 03:44 AM

Hollywood would call it The Long Goodbye. Some in the Wilshire district would simply call it long-winded.

Demolition of the landmark Ambassador Hotel to make way for a 4,200-seat campus is dragging on and on, they say, even though school officials have argued since the early 1990s that they desperately need its space for classrooms — and need it quickly.

The tear-down is in its fifth month — and to many Wilshire Boulevard passersby and neighbors, there appears to be no end in sight. In fact, there's not even not a wrecking ball in sight.

Los AngelesUnifiedSchool District planners say the demolition only appears to be going slowly because workers were forced to remove asbestos and lead from the 85-year-old hotel before knocking down its concrete walls.

Now authorities have to deal with the unexpected discovery of methane gas beneath the 24-acre hotel grounds.

Soil tests last month revealed the problem. Experts said school builders will probably be required to install an "impermeable membrane" beneath the new campus, along with a network of pipes to vent the gas.

Authorities said Thursday that could add millions to the campus' $270-million cost and could affect the planned 2008 opening of its elementary school. A middle school and a high school are also planned for the site; they are scheduled to open in 2009.

So maybe it's a good thing that demolition workers didn't give the Ambassador the kind of spectacular send-off some say the longtime celebrity hangout deserved: a dynamite-propelled implosion.

Many construction details are still being worked out even as the six-story hotel is whittled down.

And what about replicating the hotel's distinctive Wilshire-facing facade, as was discussed when the school district was fighting the Los Angeles Conservancy over the demolition? That also remains undecided.

Crews from Covina-based Cleveland Wrecking Co. began tearing down the Ambassador in mid-September. They should be finished in mid-March, said Jeff Droubay, Cleveland's vice president and project manager.

As spectacular a finale as dynamite might have been, Droubay said the Ambassador could not be blown up.

**James** · #2 (**permalink**) 01-18-2006, 06:34 AM

Demolition workers brought down the last remnants of Wilshire Boulevard's historic Ambassador Hotel on Monday as they continued to clear space for a $270-million Los Angeles Unified School District campus.

Only the Cocoanut Grove portion of the 85-year-old hotel remains standing. It will be converted into an auditorium for the site's planned high school.

Workers from Cleveland Wrecking Co. started the demolition in mid-September. Removal of steel, concrete and other hotel rubble should be completed by mid-March, Jeff Droubay, the company's vice president and project manager, said earlier this month.