Here's a look at the most anticipated Los Angeles restaurants, hotels, party rooms, corporate event venues, museums, and arenas to open this year. These new and renovated Los Angeles venues can accommodate groups large or small for private and corporate events, meetings, business dinners, cocktail parties, conferences, weddings, and more.
1. The new Broad museum of contemporary art will be located downtown on Grand Avenue. The new Diller Scofidio & Renfro 120,000-square-foot design is slated for a late 2014 opening, and general admission entry will be free to the public. The Broad will feature a third-floor gallery with nearly an acre of column-free space to display artwork from the 2,000-work Broad collections. And the first-floor lobby will include a gallery for special exhibitions, bringing the total gallery space in the museum to more than 50,000 square feet.
2. The hipster-friendly Ace Hotel opened a Los Angeles location in January in the United Artists building downtown. The hotel's anticipated restaurant, L.A. Chapter, also opened this month. For events, a restoration of the historic United Artists Theatre is available with original murals and intricate plaster work. Built in 1927 in a Spanish Gothic style, the historic theater offers 2,300 square feet of lobby space with a 35-foot ceiling, 1,600 seats, and a 783-square-foot event space. The Segovia suite, banquet rooms named Walker and Eisen, and the presidential suite are also available for events. And the Screening Room, originally Mary Pickford’s private room for screening rough cuts, is an intimate setting for screenings and meetings.
3. The Forum reopened on January 15 following a $100 million reinvention. It's the largest indoor performance venue in the country designed with a focus on music and entertainment. The interior of the bowl was completely modernized and features flexible seating for as many as 17,500. There are refurbished concourses and 8,000 square feet of new event-level hospitality offerings, including food and beverage, merchandise, and bathrooms.
4. Slated for a spring opening at the Line Hotel is Roy Choi's buzzy new restaurant, POT. The restaurant is billed as offering "Korean food through the eyes of an American with Korean blood." Look for hot pots, blood soups, and barbecue.
5. Top Chef's Brian Malarkey alongside Enlightened Hospitality Group partner James Brennan opened the restaurant Herringbone at Mondrian Los Angeles in January, taking over the restaurant space in the boutique lifestyle hotel. The menu includes seafood specialties from around the world, plus surf-and-turf dishes. It's the hospitality group’s first restaurant both in a hotel and in Los Angeles.
6. Slated to make a summer debut as North Hollywood’s newest boutique hotel is the Garland, a $20 million redesign and renovation of the Beverly Garland. The newly revamped space will include the transformation of all 242 guest rooms and 14 suites, plus public spaces. There will be a new garden space appropriate for weddings and events. The hotel’s signature restaurant will be replaced by one helmed by executive chef Warren Schwartz. The hotel is convenient to Universal Studios, Universal CityWalk, Warner Brothers Studios, and Hollywood.
7. The Museum of Neon Art closed its downtown location to prepare for a move to a bigger location in Glendale, with an expected opening this year. The new 10,000-square-foot museum will include permanent and rotating exhibition spaces and a neon fabricating facility, as well as a café and gift shop. Designed by the Shimoda Design Group, the building's focal point is a glass light box and a recognizable Diver sign perched atop. There's a permanent collection of more than 50 vintage neon signs and changing exhibitions of neon art and kinetic art every six months.
8. The Courtyard Marriott Los Angeles Downtown, slated to open in June, makes the list for its 23 floors, 169 guest rooms, and two meeting rooms in a central downtown location in striking distance to the Staples Center, L.A. Live, and the Los Angeles Convention Center. The Bistro will offer all-day dining, and there will be free Wi-Fi throughout for business travelers and meetings. There's also a fitness center, indoor pool, and whirlpool.
9. Chef Curtis Stone is slated to open his restaurant, Maude, in February. The Beverly Hills restaurant marks Stone’s first project as a restaurateur, as well as a return to his roots as a chef in the professional kitchen. Named in tribute to his late grandmother who first taught him to cook, and inspired by the chef’s table experience in which traditional menus and ordering are put aside, the 25-seat restaurant will only serve a multicourse tasting. The ever-changing menu will focus on one ingredient each month.
10. Just opened in West Hollywood in January, Gracias Madre is the Los Angeles outpost of the San Francisco Mexican restaurant with an all-organic and vegan menu. It comes from the team behind the health-food favorite Café Gratitude. The 5,000-square-foot space, designed by architect Victor Corona, has high vaulted ceilings with wood trusses, brick walls, and a generous outdoor space. Inside is a large L-shaped bar with room for 100 guests. The adjacent patio, lined with 80-year-old olive trees from landscape designer Scott Shrader, holds 130.
