It's Grand

I read the L.A. Times piece on the first phase of the Grand Avenue project featuring a Mandarin Oriental Hotel during lunch yesterday, and my amateur opinion, I agree with Christopher Hawthorne's take that it will complement Disney Hall (as it should) and would be a terrific architectural piece for the city. However, it is dismaying to hear that the best feature of Frank Gehry's design, the mirrored surface on the hotel tower, will probably go or be revised since it might face the same problems with neighbors that Disney Hall's shiny surface did. To me, the mirrored surface makes the hotel look like a giant pillar of Jell-O with a large section taken out of it to reveal air pockets and stuff. Hopefully they can find a way to keep it.