Two Major L.A. Developments Formally Nixed, City Prepares to Sell the Sites
The $2 billion Angel’s Landing skyscraper project downtown and Bethune Library redevelopment had stalled for years, and the city’s option agreements for both properties ended in late September
By Nick Trombola October 23, 2025 3:15 pm
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Time doesn’t necessarily heal all wounds, at least not when it comes to real estate development in Los Angeles.
Two prominent, vacant properties owned by the City of L.A. — including the site for the $2 billion Angel’s Landing tower project in the heart of downtown’s business district that called for hundreds of apartments, hotel rooms and retail space — will soon be up for sale, following the failure of the mixed-use complexes planned for those parcels.
The city’s option agreements for the sites ended on Sept. 30, requiring them to be declared “surplus land” and first offered to affordable housing developers for 60 days, according to Urbanize. Then the city can then widely market them.
The sites of the canceled projects are at the former Bethune Library at 3685 South Vermont Avenue, and the Angel’s Landing development site at 361 South Hill Street in Downtown L.A. — both of which had been stalled for years.
The City in 2017 chose Don Peebles’ Peebles Corporation and MacFarlane Partners to redevelop the downtown parcel into a two-skyscraper, mixed-use plaza. The planned 42- and 64-story towers — the latter of which would’ve stood as one of the tallest buildings in Southern California — would’ve featured 400 residences, two hotels and retail space.
Peebles and MacFarlane secured entitlements in 2022, yet leaked audio of a private conversation at City Hall that included racist remarks later that year sent the project on a downward spiral. Peebles and Victor MacFarlane, who are Black, called for the resignation of a councilman who represented downtown and participated in the leaked conversation. (Despite calls from across the board in L.A., the former councilman, Kevin de León, ultimately did not resign, only leaving office in late 2024 after losing his re-election bid.)
Still, the project had appeared to progress until early 2024, when the city terminated its agreement with the companies over what it called a breach of its development agreement. Peebles and MacFarlane sued the city in early 2025 over the termination, and the case is still ongoing.
At the former Bethune Library site, the city had attempted to redevelop the property into a 168-room, Marriott-branded hotel, selecting Orion Capital as the development lead in 2019. Yet the project also faced hurdles from within the city itself, as the L.A. zoning administrator and South Los Angeles Area Planning Commission rejected its approval. The L.A. City Council eventually overrode those decisions and gave Orion the green light to proceed, yet a 2023 lawsuit from Strategic Actions for a Just Economy successfully killed the project.
Representatives for the L.A. Housing Department, Peebles and MacFarlane did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
