Graffiti Towers Cleanup Begins

Crews have started cleaning the notorious graffiti towers.

The new owners of the stalled Oceanwide project in downtown Los Angeles have agreed to start cleaning up the embarrassing splash of color on the city’s skyline even before they have finished formally acquiring it.

A Wednesday jaunt up a paint-besmirched skyscraper was a test to see how much graffiti could be removed in a day, and the results were promising, said John Petty of KPC Development Co., which is set to take title of the stalled residential, hotel and retail project in a $517-million bankruptcy sale.

A condition of the sale set by the city was that the graffiti that has appalled and amused millions of passersby for more than two years would be removed immediately, even though the sale might not officially close for six months.

After the test run, Petty concluded that it will take fewer than 90 days to clean the three skyscrapers that stick out on the city skyline over Crypto.com Arena and the Harbor Freeway. Petty will put the winning bidder among competing graffiti removers to work within two weeks, he said.

He expects three crews, one for each tower, will start at the top and work their way down. Some of the work is physically risky and will require crews being lowered in suspended scaffolds known as swing stages used by window cleaners.

Petty acknowledged the nerve it took for graffiti artists to get some of their images displayed hundreds of feet in the air, lowering themselves by ropes from the top of buildings that are 42 and 54 stories tall after climbing stairs to the roofs.

“They literally rappelled down and did tagging on their way down, taking huge risks,” Petty said. “It is really a miracle that no one was killed doing this, but thank God nobody was, and we’re not going to get anybody hurt taking it off either.”

The floors of the towers are still littered with empty cans of European-made spray paint made for graffiti artists, he said. Taking the paint off will be a biodegradable product made in Atwater Village called World’s Best Bare Brick, Stone and Masonry Graffiti Remover.

Oceanwide Plaza is the highest-profile project on which his company’s products have been used, said Adam Kopcho, president of Urban Restoration Group U.S. Inc. The company supplies products to major users such as the cities of Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles.

Kopcho estimates it will take more than 1,300 gallons of graffiti remover to clean Oceanwide Plaza, though the amount may rise because much of the graffiti is dense “filled-in bubble writing that’s been baking in the hot sun since 2024,” he said.

Some taggers also laid down primer before painting windows, Petty said. “As a professional painter, that would have been probably the right thing, but it takes a little longer to remove that kind of graffiti.”

Security at the bankrupt development was lax but oversight has since been improved, Petty said, with round-the-clock security guards, cameras, laser devices and tall metal walls topped with razor wire.

The original developer, Beijing-based Oceanwide Holdings, spent about $1.2 billion on the project before running out of money in 2019 and halting construction at about 60% completion. It will take about another $850 million to finish it, Petty said.

Early in 2024, taggers began turning Oceanwide Plaza’s skyscrapers into canvases for graffiti. BASE jumpers parachuted from its heights, and a performance artist recorded himself teetering along a one-inch-wide slackline strung between two of the property’s 42-story towers.

KPC will complete the project on Figueroa Street as designed, Petty said, with 504 residential units, a luxury hotel and a shopping center.

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

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