Downtown LA’s Hotel Clark Returns After 30-Year Adaptive Reuse Saga
Hotel Clark opened to guests in downtown Los Angeles last month, ending a three-decade closure that saw the 1914 Beaux-Arts property change hands repeatedly and sit vacant since the late 1990s. Hospitality firm OTH Hotels Resorts completed a redevelopment that converted the 11-story building into a 348-room lifestyle hotel with a rooftop pool, fitness center, and game room. Rates start at $207 per night for standard rooms and $508 for one-bedroom suites. A Mediterranean restaurant, Votana, opens October 15, alongside a bourbon-focused sports bar and lobby lounge.
Railway entrepreneur Eli P. Clark built the property in 1914 as a 555-room hotel, but it was later converted to low-rent apartments. Attempts to evict tenants and restore luxury status in 1979 ended in lawsuits and a harassment settlement. The People’s Republic of China bought the building in the late 1980s, gutted the interior for a planned business and cultural center, but abandoned the project when diplomatic relations deteriorated. Another conversion to low-income housing followed, then a second eviction battle that ended in a $1.7 million settlement.
The Chetrit Group acquired the property in the late 1990s and began renovations in 2012, finishing interior work by 2014. Despite completion, the building remained empty for another decade before OTH Hotels took over and opened it to the public. The hotel sits near the Los Angeles Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena, positioning it to capture convention and sports traffic in a downtown submarket that has struggled with high office vacancy and homelessness. Few historic hotel conversions in Los Angeles have taken as long or faced as many ownership disputes.
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