Malls · California

Crossroads of the World

Imported, unreviewedRedevelopedReinhabitedRetrofit approvedLos Angeles, CA

Approved 2019 retrofit for 950 housing units, 308-room hotel, and 190k sq ft retail; record is 'draft' with no current developer details. · summary, model-written

Claim this site Ask who owns this

Download dossier (PDF) · early access Download record (JSON) API Share LinkedIn Correct this record

Solid = from the authors' map · outlined = public source · dashed = model-written, not yet reviewed by a person. Tap any value's source label to see where it came from. documented = a quoted excerpt (click to read it) · reported = a source named, no excerpt yet · no source.

Crossroads of the World — Exterior view of a shopping center with palm trees and a tall tower under a clear blue sky. · verified by a vision model. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Site profile13 elements · what this site is built with · tap a chip for the evidence

Finance and pipeline

Retrofit in the pipeline

This site: …approved newtypes-extraction · all sites with this

Place

3+ other atlas sites within 10 km

This site: 21 within 10 km computed · all sites with this

30,000+ vehicles a day on an adjacent road

This site: 40,863 on a counted road fhwa-hpms · all sites with this

County permitting 2,000+ apartment units a year

This site: 9,430 units, Los Angeles County census-bps · all sites with this

County typical rent $2,000+

This site: $2,806/mo zillow · all sites with this

Shrinking county

This site: -2.5% census-acs · all sites with this

Strategy

Redeveloped

This site: Three high-rise buildings are planned to bring 950 apartments and condos, a 308-room hotel, and 190,000 square feet (18,000 m2) of commercial space. record · all sites with this

Reinhabited

This site: Three high-rise buildings are planned to bring 950 apartments and condos, a 308-room hotel, and 190,000 square feet (18,000 m2) of commercial space. record · all sites with this

New use

Hotel

This site: are planned to bring 950 apartments and condos, a 308-room hotel, and 190,000 square feet (18,000 m2) of commercial space. A newtypes-extraction · all sites with this

Housing

This site: Three high-rise buildings are planned to bring 950 apartments and condos, a 308-room hotel, and 190,000 square feet (18,0 newtypes-extraction · all sites with this

Mixed use

This site: …new_use field newtypes-extraction · all sites with this

Office

This site: …new_use field newtypes-extraction · all sites with this

Retail (continued)

This site: …new_use field newtypes-extraction · all sites with this

All elements and lists · Trends

Now

Status	Retrofit approvednewtypes-extraction reported
Strategy	Redevelopment · Reinhabitation, approvedWikipedia no source
New uses	hotel, housing, mixed, office, retailWikipedia no source
What is there now	Three high-rise buildings are planned to bring 950 apartments and condos, a 308-room hotel, and 190,000 square feet (18,000 m2) of commercial space.newtypes-extraction reported
Retrofit year	2019newtypes-extraction reported

Links out

Every link is built from an id this record holds (parcel number, filer CIK, Wikidata item, Census tract, coordinates) or from the name and city typed into a search. Nothing here is a guessed address. Search links are marked search in their source note; commercial listing links are marked for search engines not to follow. Hover a link for why it is here.

Official records (4)

government and regulatory records for this site, built from ids on the record

EDGAR full-text search: “Crossroads of the World”from city search
Los Angeles County (06037) profile (data.census.gov)from data.census.gov
FEMA flood map (NFHL) at this point (search)from msc.fema.gov
EPA ECHO facilities within 1 milefrom echo.epa.gov

Reference (5)

encyclopedic and research references

Wikipedia articlefrom en.wikipedia.org
Wikidata item Q5188853from wikidata.org
Wikimedia Commons photos within 500 mfrom commons.wikimedia.org
Retrofitting Suburbia (book site)from retrofittingsuburbia.com
Los Angeles on Wikipediafrom en.wikipedia.org

Place (8)

map and street views by coordinates

Google Mapsfrom google.com
Street Viewfrom google.com
Bing Mapsfrom bing.com
Apple Mapsfrom maps.apple.com
OpenStreetMapfrom openstreetmap.org
Walk Score at this pointfrom walkscore.com
Transitland mapfrom transit.land
USGS National Mapfrom apps.nationalmap.gov

Market (1)

listings and owner pages; commercial, so search engines are told not to follow

LoopNet: for sale in Los Angeles, CA (search)from city search

News (2)

news searches and archived pages

Google News: “Crossroads of the World” (search)from name search
Bing News: “Crossroads of the World” (search)from name search

History and original facts

Opened	1936newtypes-extraction reported
Original developer	Ellanewtypes-extraction reported
County	Los Angeles County
Census division	9 · Pacific
Notes	Draft from Wikipedia, model-extracted, unreviewed: Crossroads of the World, originally an open-air mall, was converted to offices in the 1950s and has an approved plan to be redeveloped into a mixed-use complex with housing, a hotel, and commercial space.

Not yet recorded: acres, GLA. Know it? Tell us.

Planning

Entitlement year	2019Wikipedia
Planning notes	Approved by Los Angeles City Council.Wikipedia no source

Deals and debt

Date	Event	Price	Parties	Source
1977	Sold	—	Mort La Kretz	Wikipedia

Before and after

Before: the mall

Architect	Robert V. Derrahquote

After: the retrofit

Nothing extracted yet.

Hover "quote" to see the sentence each value came from. Planned figures are labelled planned. Method.

Site context

Housing permits, Los Angeles County (CA), 2024	9,430 units in 5+ unit buildings, 1,273 in 2–4, 9,106 single-family; 2023: 13,214 in 5+Census BPS
Other atlas sites nearby	21 within 10 km, 34 within 25 km: Town & Country Market (3.8 km); Vacant Beverly Grove buildings (4.2 km); Beverly Plaza Shopping Center (4.8 km); Walker (5.1 km); Mason (5.5 km)computed
Retail trade in the county, 2025 (BLS QCEW)	391,331 jobs in 28,960 establishments; average annual pay $52,235; employment location quotient 0.87; employment -1.7% on the yearBLS QCEW 2025, NAICS 44-45, private
Jobs located in the tract, 2022	5,346 jobs; 428 in retail trade, 1,684 in accommodation and food (workplace blocks summed to tract 06037190701)Census LEHD LODES8 WAC 2022
Upward mobility (Opportunity Atlas, 2010 tract)	children of low-income (25th percentile) families reached the 40th income percentile as adults; 0.6% incarcerated at the 2010 count (596 children in the sample); born 1978–83, measured 2014–15Opportunity Insights
Food access (USDA FARA 2019, 2010 tract)	not a low-access tract at 1 mile; poverty rate 29.3%; median family income $72,750; 153 SNAP householdsUSDA ERS
Schools	Los Angeles Unified School District (KG-12); 4 public schools within 1 mile: Hubert Howe Bancroft Middle; Gardner Street Elementary; Hollywood Senior High; Vine Street ElementaryNCES EDGE
Elevation	352 ft above sea level at the site pointUSGS 3DEP
Storm events in the county, 2016-2025	157 county-logged events: 86 flash flood, 35 thunderstorm wind, 21 debris flow, 6 hail; $8,000 property damage reported; 1 direct deaths; forecast-zone events (most flood, winter and heat) not countedNOAA Storm Events
Homes for sale in ZIP 90028, 2026-09	median list price $898,000 (-9.8% on the year); 42 active listings; median 87 days on market; 11% with a price cutRealtor.com Research
Retail trade in the county, 2012 to 2023	28,998 establishments (+2%); 419,890 jobs (+8%)Census CBP
Housing market in the county	typical home value $871,674 (+0% 1 yr, +13% 5 yr); typical rent $2,806/mo (+1% 1 yr), 2026-09Zillow Research
Traffic on the busiest road within 600 m (2024)	40,863 vehicles a day (principal arterial, 4 lanes); 3,749 trucks; 22 counted segmentsFHWA HPMS

Summary, model-written

Crossroads of the World opened as an open-air mall in 1936 (original developer: Ella). It was converted to an office complex by 1950, sold to Mort La Kretz in 1977, and later restored. In 2019, the City Council approved a retrofit project to redevelop the site into housing (950 apartments/condos), a 308-room hotel, and 190,000 sq ft of commercial space. The project is approved and listed as 'under construction' in context. The record is marked 'draft' and lacks current ownership details beyond the 1977 sale. No market data (e.g., rent, sales) is included in the structured facts. The site is in Los Angeles County, with 21 nearby developments within 10km, including proposed and under-construction projects. The opportunity score is 0.0 due to being 'already in play' (approved/under construction).

Why. The assessment uses only the record's facts: year_opened, events, deals, planning_notes, after_notes, and context. No external data is added. The 'draft' verification and lack of current developer name are noted as unknowns.

Where it stands. Approved retrofit (2019), 950 housing units planned, 308-room hotel, 190k sq ft commercial space. Status: 'approved' with no current construction timeline. Context shows 21 nearby developments within 10km, but no specific developer or current progress details are provided in the record.

For a planner

Approved by City Council (2019)
950 housing units planned
190k sq ft commercial space
21 nearby developments within 10km (including proposed/under construction)

For a developer

Project approved (2019)
950 housing units, 308-room hotel, 190k sq ft retail planned
No current developer named
Record marked 'draft' (verification incomplete)

What we do not know yet

No current developer or ownership details beyond 1977 sale
Record verified as 'draft'
No construction start date or timeline provided
No market data (rent, sales) included in facts

Generated by qwen3-30b-a3b-64k:latest on Dell 5820 RTX 3090 (Ollama, qwen3-30b-a3b) from the fields, parcels, deals and context layers on this page, with no outside knowledge. It is regenerated when the record changes and has not been checked by a person. How it is made.

Similar sites

Town & Country Market, Los Angeles, CA · Other · opened 1942; same strategy: redevelop; also in CA
Closed shopping mall in Long Beach, Long Beach, CA · Malls · same strategy: redevelop; also in CA; 39 km away
Westside Pavilion, Los Angeles, CA · Malls · same strategy: reinhabit; also in CA; 12 km away
Plaza Pasadena, Pasadena, CA · Malls · same strategy: redevelop; also in CA; 18 km away

Elsewhere on the web

Search images: Google · Bing · Commons · references: ULI case studies · Google Scholar

Multifamily screen

already in play: under construction, approved, or sold to a developer with housing plans
county shrank -2.5% 2018–23
median rent $1,893
housing in the record

Inputs: record fields (size, status) and county Census ACS 2018–2023 figures (growth, rent). How the points work. Not a recommendation.

Background

Crossroads of the World is an open-air mall on Sunset Boulevard and Las Palmas in Los Angeles. The mall features a central building designed to resemble an ocean liner surrounded by a small village of cottage-style bungalows. It was designed by Robert V. Derrah, built in 1936, and has been called America's first outdoor shopping mall. Once a busy shopping center, the Crossroads later became private offices, primarily for the entertainment industry with a variety of music publishers and producers, television and film script writers, film and recording companies, novelists, costume designers, publicists, and casting agencies.

Excerpt from Wikipedia (authors and history), CC BY-SA 4.0. May be older than the record above.

Timeline

1936 Opened as an open-air mall
1936 Opened
1950 Converted into an office complex
1977 Purchased and restored by Mort La Kretz
2019 Project to revamp approved by City Council
2019 Retrofit: redevelop, reinhabit

Sources

Crossroads of the World · CC BY-SA 4.0
5 quoted sentences
Crossroads of the World
The Crossroads of the World was inaugurated on October 29, 1936.
In the 1950s, the Crossroads of the World was converted into an office complex.
The property was purchased in 1977 by the real estate investor Mort La Kretz and restored.

Cite

Retrofit Atlas (2026). "Crossroads of the World, Los Angeles, CA." Record n-df0d7506ee, imported, unreviewed. Built on the public Retrofitting Suburbia map (Dunham-Jones and Williamson) and the sources listed. https://retrofitatlas.org/malls/ca/los-angeles-crossroads-of-the-world/ (accessed 2026-10-21).

BibTeX

@misc{retrofitatlas_losangelescrossroadsoftheworld,
  title = {Crossroads of the World, Los Angeles, CA},
  author = {{Retrofit Atlas}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://retrofitatlas.org/malls/ca/los-angeles-crossroads-of-the-world/}},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Record n-df0d7506ee, release 2026-10-21, tier: draft. Built on the Retrofitting Suburbia map (Dunham-Jones and Williamson) and the sources listed on the record. Accessed 2026-10-21}
}

How to cite, versioning

Link back

Paste on a project page: <a href="https://retrofitatlas.org/malls/ca/los-angeles-crossroads-of-the-world/">Crossroads of the World on Retrofit Atlas</a>