Graffiti News

Cleanup has begun at Oceanwide Plaza, the abandoned three-tower complex in downtown Los Angeles known to many Angelenos as the graffiti towers. According to ABC7 Los Angeles, reporting on 23 July 2026, the city has confirmed the sale of the property, and the mayor's office says the developers have agreed to remove all of the graffiti from the buildings within three months.

Sold for $517 million

According to ABC7, KPC Development and Landlease have purchased the three-tower complex for $517 million and are expected to invest hundreds of millions of dollars more to finish the long-stalled project.

John Petty of KPC Development said the buildings were in better shape than they appear. "It actually is much better than it looks from the outside, and a lot of it is salvageable. So we've been very encouraged," he said. He was direct about the surfaces: "The graffiti will be completely removed from Oceanwide Plaza." According to the company, the site has been secured with fencing, barbed wire and 24-hour security patrols.

The complex will not be open in time for the Olympics in 2028, but the developers say it will be occupied by the end of that year.

What accumulates on an unmanaged high-rise

Oceanwide Plaza was once envisioned as a luxury residential project and became an abandoned high-rise complex. According to ABC7, it attracted graffiti artists and thrill seekers from around the world, and drew attention for stunts that included tightrope walking between the towers and parachute jumps from the buildings.

That scale is rare in a city centre. A street wall is cleaned within days or months. An abandoned tower has effectively no site management for a prolonged period, so work accumulates floor by floor and stays visible from across the skyline. That is how the complex came to be called the graffiti towers rather than simply a stalled construction site.

It was also unpermitted work carried out by entering private property. This piece does not settle whether that was justified. It is worth recording, though, what the current decision removes.

The neighbourhood welcomes the cleanup

Residents and business leaders in the surrounding area have welcomed the work. "We're ecstatic that something is happening," Debra Shrout of the South Park Neighborhood Association told ABC7.

Nella McOsker of the Central City Association said the project could become an important symbol for downtown Los Angeles. "We are very excited at the potential of this symbol of recovery and the way in which it sends a different message to people who are choosing whether or not to come to downtown," McOsker said.

How the painted surfaces should be read is not settled by either view. To one person the towers signalled a city that had given up on a block; to another they were the most photographed unpermitted work of recent years. The sale resolves that argument in one direction, because the owner of the wall changed and with it the decision.

What is left after three months

In three months the surfaces of the complex return to what they were. After that, the only way to establish what was on them is whatever photographs survive.

Oceanwide Plaza was large enough that a great many people photographed it. Most street work is not. One person paints it, it is covered a few weeks later, and no record is kept.

The Wallscape map keeps work that was uploaded with its location, so the record of what was where survives the repainting of the wall. The feed shows what is going up in cities now.

The buildings stay. The construction finishes. The surfaces get repainted. What was on them disappears unless somebody wrote it down.

Source: ABC7 Los Angeles, 23 July 2026.