L.A.'s il Magnifico

Eli Broad has been making up his mind. His mind is turned to thoughts of his museum and where in the fabric of the city it should rise. And, according to both the New York and Los Angeles Times, the location is almost certainly on Grand Avenue, not far from the Disney Concert Hall and across the street from the Museum of Contemporary Art on Bunker Hill.
The favored site is currently a glum parking lot on land owned by the city. Broad has said that hopes to get the site for essentially nothing. He has suggested that the lease value be $1.
Broad 's museum plans have been spectacularly mobile - Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and downtown (among other locations) have been in the running for months. But downtown was always to place to beat, if only because Broad can build there in the company of institutions he helped create and which are housed in buildings he helped imagine into existence: the Frank Gehry-designed concert hall and Arata Isozaki's art museum.
And this gesture - his museum - could bring closer Broad's vision for Grand Avenue. His vision has been troubled lately by the bad economy, bad timing, and bad relationships among the outsized personalities who want Grand Avenue to be theirs. That power, money, and egos are at play isn't news. Nor should anyone be surprised that Broad wants his place on the avenue for a dollar or that the developers of Grand Avenue want Broad's museum as part of their sales pitch for luxury condominiums.
In some ways, I suppose, giving Broad the land (worth, the county estimates, about $7.7 million) is fair. Broad has been the backer or fixer or public face of most of the city's cultural monuments since the late 1980s. The city and the county both are broke, but it's almost impossible to say "no" to Broad.
He'll get the land (which will comfortably house his private foundation offices). Developers will get a bauble that will help move expensive real estate (which is yet to be built). And the rest of us will be given the opportunity to see what great wealth has acquired . . . which has always been our place in the order of things. 
The Image on this page was taken by Flickr user Michael Evanet. It was used under a Creative Commons license.