L.A. Live, the Arena & the Graffiti Towers

The newest corner of downtown — a sports palace and a billion-dollar ruin, staring at each other across the street.

Key facts

The arena on your right opened in 1999 as Staples Center and was renamed Crypto.com Arena on December 25, 2021; next to it L.A. Live — theatres, restaurants, the Grammy Museum, a hotel tower — opened in phases from 2007, the JW Marriott/Ritz-Carlton tower in 2010.
Directly across Figueroa stand the three towers of Oceanwide Plaza (1101 Flower St), a ~$1 billion project by Beijing's Oceanwide Holdings: broke ground 2015, halted in 2019 when the developer ran out of money, and left a skeleton.
In late January 2024 taggers covered the empty towers floor by floor — the "Graffiti Towers." After years in bankruptcy the block changed hands for about $470 million in 2026, with owners hoping to finish it ahead of the city's 2028 events.

Narration transcript

On your right is the newest corner of downtown, and it's a study in contrasts. First the bright one: that's the arena — it opened in 1999 as Staples Center and now wears the name Crypto.com Arena — home to the Lakers, the Kings, the Clippers. Around it is L.A. Live, a whole entertainment district of theatres and restaurants and a hotel tower that went up in the late 2000s where there used to be parking lots.

Now look just behind it, at the three tall towers standing dark and still. That's Oceanwide Plaza — and it's one of the strangest ruins in America. A Chinese developer started it in 2015 as a billion-dollar luxury complex, then ran out of cash in 2019 and simply walked away, leaving the towers as bare concrete skeletons. In early 2024, graffiti artists climbed in and tagged them floor by floor, top to bottom — overnight they became the "Graffiti Towers," an accidental landmark. The block finally changed hands in 2026 for around four hundred and seventy million dollars, and someone may yet finish it. A palace and a ruin, face to face across one street.