Southern California billionaire Rick Caruso weighs in on the vandalism and trespassing that has continued to happen in the “Graffiti Towers” in downtown Los Angeles. Alex Rozier reports for the NBC4 News on May 17, 2024.
Problems continued this week at the so-called ‘Graffiti Towers’ in downtown Los Angeles. The latest stunt? Slacklining – more than 40 floors up, more than 500 feet high - between two of the skyscrapers at the abandoned Oceanwide Plaza Development.
Businessman Rick Caruso said some of LA’s leaders have failed to hold people accountable when they commit crimes and they’ve sent the wrong message that people can get away with breaking the law.
“You’ve got to send the message not to do that again,” Caruso said. “You have got to hold criminals responsible.”
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The slacklining is the latest issue in a long list of problems for the abandoned complex. Earlier this year, dozens of floors on all three towers were nearly covered in graffiti.
“The fact that we even had a headline that said is it art or is it graffiti? It’s a crime. Someone went in and destroyed someone’s private property,” Caruso said.
In addition to the graffiti, there have been base jumpers at the property, too. All this after Oceanwide’s Chinese developer ran out of money in 2019 and abandoned the project.
“I could talk a long time about how I thought the direction of development in downtown was wrong, because it was so dependent on Chinese development, Chinese Government money,” Caruso said. “I would say that to Eric Garcetti, there’s too much risk associated with that, and here’s the result of that bad decision.”
In recent months, the city has taken steps to secure the site. The council approved more than $1 million taxpayer dollars to build a fence around the perimeter and for at least three months LAPD has patrolled every corner of the development – 24 hours a day.
“Officers on every corner of this development is a waste of our officers time, money, and our taxpaying dollars,” he said. “We don’t have enough officers to patrol the geographic expanse of this city.”
Last week, some celebrated what’s believed to be good news when the Oceanwide development went up for sale.
Though Caruso isn’t too optimistic, he said he doesn’t know of anyone interested in buying the property.
“This product, I think, is going to be very difficult to sell,” Caruso said. “When you look at a project like this, I would imagine, by the time you buy it and complete it, you’re exceeding a billion dollars.”
“I know a lot of people in the banking world, in the capital markets world, they don’t want to invest in LA,” he said. “Taxes are high, red tape is as thick as it gets.”
As for Oceanwide, the slackline stunt is just the latest. Caruso said the people breaking the law need to be held accountable and problems need to be fixed.
“And by the way you have the World Cup coming here in two years, you have the Olympics coming here in four years, the world is watching Los Angeles,” Caruso said. “Los Angeles is the greatest city in the world. I still believe that. But we are chipping away at that greatness little by little.”
