Graffiti News

Crews began removing graffiti from Oceanwide Plaza, the unfinished three-tower complex on S Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles, in July 2026. According to CBS News, a bankruptcy court finalised the sale of the property on 21 July 2026 and cleanup started immediately afterwards.

Construction on the site had been halted for close to six years. During that time the half-finished structures became covered in graffiti, which is how they earned the nickname "the graffiti towers".

Who bought it and what they intend to build

The new owner is a joint venture between KPC and Lendlease. ABC7 reported the purchase price at $517 million, with the buyers planning to invest hundreds of millions more.

The venture intends to complete the 1.5 million-square-foot complex as it was originally designed: 504 condominiums, a 184-room hotel and 153,000 square feet of retail space, half of it given over to food and beverage. Units in Tower One average 2,200 square feet; units in Towers Two and Three average 1,435 square feet.

CBS News reported that the ground floor is expected to be substantially complete by January 2028, with occupancy in late 2028.

The 90-day promise

John Petty, a director at KPC, said: "we promised 90 days, but we think it'll be sooner that the graffiti will be completely removed from Oceanwide Plaza."

ABC7 reported that the mayor's office confirmed the developers had agreed to remove all graffiti within three months and to have the complex occupied by the end of 2028. Petty also said of the buildings themselves: "It actually is much better than it looks from the outside, and a lot of it is salvageable."

Security went up alongside the paint crews. The site now has 24-hour guards, barbed-wire fencing and perimeter laser detection.

The neighbourhood said it would watch too

The South Park Neighborhood Association pledged to help private security monitor the property. Debra Shrout, the association's board chair, said: "As a neighborhood organization, we are going to watch it." Her home overlooks the towers.

Shrout told ABC7: "We're ecstatic that something is happening." Nella McOsker of the Central City Association pointed to the site's potential as a symbol of recovery.

Oscar Meza, a resident, told CBS News: "It's always been this, so I am curious to how it is going to be now."

Why a stalled building becomes a canvas

Oceanwide Plaza is a large-scale version of a pattern that recurs throughout graffiti history. A stalled construction site is hard to secure, its ownership often becomes unclear during bankruptcy, and the longer it sits the more the blank surfaces read as available. Put that structure in the middle of a downtown and the visibility is enormous.

Two things follow from the sequence at Oceanwide Plaza. The scale of the painting tracked the length of the ownership vacuum: the site sat for close to six years. And removal was decided almost instantly once ownership was resolved, with cleanup starting within days of the court approving the sale.

Whether the erasure destroys something or simply ends a period of neglect is a matter people disagree on, and this piece does not settle it. What is worth stating plainly is that the surfaces will be gone.

When it goes, the record is what is left

In 90 days the exterior of Oceanwide Plaza returns to its intended colour. What survives the repaint is photographs and locations.

The Wallscape map shows registered work by city and the feed collects recent photographs. Wallscape does not encourage painting without permission.