It's Not Too Late to Save Taix

Regular readers (and anyone paying attention) know that Taix's longtime home, a French Country-esque building on Sunset Boulevard, is doomed.

But what if it doesn't have to be?

There are few surviving remnants of Old French Los Angeles. Of the 500 French-associated sites I've catalogued on a Google Map over the past 7 years, there are only about 25 still standing in Los Angeles County.*

Does Taix - one of those rare survivors - really have to be demolished so this revolting abomination can dwarf everything else in Echo Park?

New owners Holland Partner Group** initially claimed they would preserve some of Taix's current features. The newer rendering indicates that isn't the case.

According to a former tenant, Holland Partner Group is also a bad developer and a bad property manager (the company is vertically integrated).

Well, what do we really expect from out-of-town developers? They're not invested in the community. They don't care about Los Angeles or its people. They see "LA" and get dollar signs in their eyes.

But what if we could landmark Taix and give the building some protection? What if it could even be incorporated into a (hopefully far less ugly) housing complex?

I'm not anti-housing. I'm against housing misuse. Apartments should never be illegally run as hotels, livable vacant homes should never sit empty and rot by the thousands while ordinary Angelenos struggle to afford inflated rents, and shiny new luxury apartments (which we have more than enough of) should never displace existing affordable housing. Successful cities have a mix of housing at a mix of pricing levels for every class of resident. That problem can't be solved by one new development. Although I dislike excessive taxation, a vacancy tax might provide landlords with a stronger long-term incentive to keep units filled with full-time renters.

Want to save Taix? Sign the petition here.

Join Friends of Taix if you're on Facebook.

And if you're close enough, help the restaurant keep going by ordering takeout or delivery.

*Not counting street names, park names, school names, memorial plaques, or cemeteries.

**To clarify: the Taix family still owns the restaurant business. Holland Partner Group owns the building, the land it's on, and Taix's overflow parking lot nearby.