The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) is preparing to begin construction at the northeast corner of La Brea Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard, the site of a future Purple Line subway station.

The former Metro customer service center at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and La Brea Avenue is slated for demolition within the coming weeks. (photo by Edwin Folven)

A parking lot at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Detroit Street will be closed on April 1, and a fence will be erected around the property. Demolition work will begin approximately one month later at the former Metro customer service center at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, the neighboring Lawrence of La Brea building and a building that formerly housed a Blockbuster video store on La Brea Avenue, just north of Wilshire Boulevard.

Metro spokesman Dave Sotero said an L-shaped alley that currently runs south from 6th Street and east to La Brea Avenue will also be re-routed to exit on Detroit Street. He added that Metro owns the surface parking lot at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Detroit Street, and had allowed free public parking on the lot during the past year until work was ready to begin.

“The first thing we have to do is get rid of everything there,” Sotero said. “In the May timeframe, we will start doing the demolition work of the customer service center. It will last from April through summer.”

Once the demolition is complete, Metro plans to erect a sound wall and start digging down 75 feet to where the future subway station will be built. Plans call for a tunneling machine to be lowered into the ground at the site at a date to be determined.

Kasey Shuda, manager of construction relations for Metro, said the exact schedule is still being finalized for the excavation work. The sound wall around the property must be a minimum of 20-feet high, and it must be in place before the actual digging begins. The demolition work will occur only during the day from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

A handful of trees on the parking lot, and some other trees around the site, will be removed. She said the tree removal is necessary because the crews will be digging under the location.

A total of 90 trees will eventually be removed from the medians and sidewalks around the Purple Line construction area along Wilshire Boulevard from Western Avenue to La Cienega Boulevard. That number is down from the 101 trees Metro had originally planned to remove. Lyn Cohen, president of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition, said she still hopes more trees can be saved.