The limbo state of Los Angeles’s Oceanwide Plaza may finally be coming to an end. Lendlease and India-based developer KPC Group indicated they would purchase the three-tower plaza for $470 million, per federal bankruptcy court filings. The pending sale now weighs on an April 9 court date for approval, given that no higher offer is received.
The maligned development recently entered its sixth year of speculative development. The towers have sat incomplete and vacant since 2019, when Beijing-based developer Oceanwide Holdings halted its funding for the project at 60 percent completion, with $1.2 billion already invested into it. It was planned as part of a wider transformation of Los Angeles’s downtown center into a Times Square–like destination zone, a goal the new buyers aspire to fulfill.
“We are excited to move forward with a catalytic investment that creates a path to turn around a key part of Downtown LA,” Kali P. Chaudhuri, founder of the KPC Group, said in a statement. The project includes two 42-story towers, a 52-story tower, and an 11-story luxury hotel. The development firm plans to remove the graffiti and complete the site’s mixed-use infrastructure, including parking, retail, dining, and office spaces.
Since development stalled, the framework has been a site for graffiti artists, grounds for base jumpers, and, most recently, the subject of a miniature in an exhibition by artist Sayre Gomez.
Chaudhuri has realized developments across Southern California for decades, but not without controversy. A healthcare project the firm was behind in 2000 saw months of mismanagement by the developer, which ultimately caused three dozen of its clinics to close, leaving 300,000 patients without care.
The bid for Oceanwide Plaza by KPC Group and Lendlease is generally a credit bid in the form of a Purchase Sale Agreement, as outlined in the court filings. Of the purchase amount $70 million is cash, and the remaining $400 is from creditors. An overseas investor and the real estate investor, Cityview, may have a larger, all-cash offer, TheRealDeal reported. The brokerage Colliers and advisory firm Hilco Real Estate have overseen the sale of the property since 2024, with Bloomberg initially reporting that lenders and other creditors required an estimated $400 million to recoup their losses.
The transformation of Oceanwide Plaza is among the myriad infrastructure improvements across the city in anticipation of the 2028 Summer Olympic Games. “With the resurgence of our Downtown and as we prepare to host Olympic and Paralympic events right across the street, I look forward to working with the new ownership to transform this plaza into something that spurs further investment — and that Angelenos can be proud of,” Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement regarding the development.
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