It anchored part of Downtown L.A.’s upswing, operated one of the area’s first rooftop bars and became a cultural destination, but at the end of January, DTLA’s Ace Hotel will be no more.
Ace Hotel announced that its L.A. location “will cease operations soon” after a decade in business on Broadway.
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The one bit of good news is that the attached theater—the former United Artists Theatre, a nearly century-old, Gothic-flourished movie palace that was restored when the hotel opened in 2014—will continue to operate under new management (here’s hoping the lobby’s bizarre Cathedral of Our Ladyfingers statue sticks around).
That comes from a statement provided to SFGATE, which first broke the story. The report cites the neighborhood’s slow post-pandemic recovery and details that the owners of the building will convert the hotel to “a limited-service, rooms-only operation, managed via a tech platform” (which, to us, sounds like rooms will still be rentable on a platform like Sonder or Airbnb but without any of the additional hotel-y services). The lobby-level restaurant LOAM (formerly Best Girl and L.A. Chapter before that) will close, as will rooftop pool bar Upstairs. The last day of service will be January 31, 2024.
“There’s no place like this place,” the hotel shared on its Instagram. “We could fill a library with our love for Los Angeles and, in particular, 929 S Broadway—our magical home, which was really yours. The Spanish Gothic-style rooftop crown, a beacon—summoning mavericks, mystics, sun-seekers and four-on-the-floor dancers. Since 2014, you’ve answered the call with fervor and feeling and so much love.”
It’s hard to overstate just how big of a deal Upstairs was, in particular. Now you’re never more than a couple of blocks from a rooftop bar in that part of DTLA. But when Upstairs opened, it was the only place around like it (aside from Perch and the now-shuttered Rooftop at the Standard, both on the other end of DTLA). It was also as trendy as it was lovably dorky, the sort of place photogenic enough to make it into an Olympic bid video and attract long lines and weekends but also host zine meet-ups and viewing parties for bird migrations.
The hotel itself was a fixture in a number of our travel features, and its programming was unparalleled for a while: The Halloween and New Year’s Eve parties were epic, it was a hangout hub for fests like RIOT LA and it hosted everything from a climate change forum to a Nick Cave art show. Since the theater technically isn’t going away, we’ll skip eulogizing that venue—except to say that we at Time Out were honored to be able to hold our 2016 Bar Awards in its lobby.
The Ace’s magnetism as a commercial destination wasn’t an entirely grassroots effort. As L.A. Weekly detailed at the time, you can credit a single real estate broker with bringing the Ace to the block as well as nine nearby high-end retailers soon after it, a strategy New York Magazine referred to as a “hot-neighborhood-starter-kit.” The hotel also arrived during the peak of the city’s Bringing Back Broadway initiative, which revitalized neon marquees and made the street more pedestrian-friendly through a project led by then-council member José Huizar (who was eventually indicted and pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and tax evasion charges tied to other real estate developments in the area).
If you’ve been following or frequenting the hotel and its neighboring retail and restaurant scene for the past decade, this probably feels like the end of an era—and maybe even yet another foreboding sign of the area’s seemingly halted momentum since the pandemic. This is a district where, only a few years ago, there was talk of building a streetcar and the term “Manhattanization” was routinely being tossed about. Now, even though about a half-dozen hotels with similar vibes have since moved into the neighborhood, that spark of excitement that once buzzed about Broadway seems to have faded—though hopefully not permanently.