Today I flew from IND to DEN—
Then from DEN to LAX—
—Where I had plenty of time to fantasize about what could or should be done with the iconic but idle Theme Building in the heart of the airport, while waiting for my wife to pick me up. (She was, in the city tradition, stuck in traffic.)
Ideas? Bear in mind that the LAX Automated People Mover will soon be done, meaning parking for that building might soon be a remote issue.
Some buildings should meet a bulldozer, iconic or not. LAX is redesigned, updated, and modernized by a committee which adds complexity instead of simplicity with every change proclaimed to be an improvement. Elimination of the iconic restaurant and sacred parking garages would be a step in the right direction. For me, I’m abandoning LAX for SBA as first choice airport. (That does mean too many connections at DEN.)
A thousand years ago, in the late ’80s, the guy who ran SFO was a guest on a Bay Area radio talk show. A caller asked why it seemed that SFO was always under construction. He said, “All major airports will be under a state of construction until the end of time.” So I suppose, with that in mind, that building should go. So should everything involving cars, trucks, vans, and the rest of it. But reality is messy and here we are.
By the way, my wife found it almost impossible ot pick me up at that location, and we had to find another, which was additionally inconvenienced when my phone died and I was lucky she found me.
See SFGATE (on-line) today for an article on the theme restaurant: LAX’s crumbling icon once housed a bizarre Disney restaurant. From the article: “ An LAX fact sheet on the space released in 2020 had no real plans for its future.”
Best answer: Bulldozer. No one will ever be willing to go through the agony of getting to & from LAX just for dinner.
A perhaps interesting fact is that the four legs of the building went through a lot of renewal a few years ago. There was scaffolding all over the place. It was torn down to the studs, so to speak, and rebuilt. Not saying it shouldn’t be bulldozed; just that a lot of renewal work did go into it. The “people mover” train, by the way, is supposed to make getting to and from LAX from elsewhere (e.g. rental car sites) much easier. We’ll see.
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