China property woes leave Los Angeles with a billion dollar tower of graffiti

When plans for the Oceanwide Plaza development were unveiled in 2015, it was billed as a gleaming symbol of downtown Los Angeles’ renaissance. 

The development’s Chinese backers laid out a $1bn vision of 500 luxury condos, a five-star Plaza Hotel and retail space — all sitting in a prime location just across from the arena where the LA Lakers play basketball. A 700-foot LED screen would wrap around the building, giving a pulse to the burgeoning entertainment destination.

Today, however, Oceanwide Plaza remains unfinished and its parent company is out of money. Instead of a prime downtown destination, Oceanwide has become another vexing problem for LA officials who are already grappling with a homelessness crisis and a serious lack of affordable housing.

Oceanwide’s three unfinished towers are covered with the work of seemingly gravity-defying graffiti writers, whose spray-painted tags gained worldwide attention in January when the Grammy Awards were held across the street at the Crypto.com Arena. The publicity attracted even more graffiti artists and other daredevils.

In the weeks since, paragliders have posted videos of themselves diving off the structure’s bare girders 20-plus storeys in the air. For LA mayor Karen Bass, that was the final straw. 

“I guarantee you tragedy will take place there if that place is not boarded up quickly,” Bass told a local television station this week. “The owner should reimburse the city for every dime.”

The city has given Oceanwide until this weekend to secure the area around the site. If the company fails to do so, then the job — and most likely the expense — will fall to the city of Los Angeles.

Kevin De León, a member of LA’s city council, issued a motion this week in which he called Oceanwide Plaza a “black eye on an otherwise vibrant part” of downtown LA. Besides the graffiti and parachuting, bandits had been stripping the building of copper wire, he said.  

His motion, backed by the rest of the…