Graffiti towers clean-up begins

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Set us as preferred Crews started cleaning the notorious Graffiti towers.The new owners of the stalled Oceanwide project in downtown Los Angeles have agreed to start cleaning up the embarrassing splash of color on the city’s skyline even before they have finished formally acquiring it.

A jaunt up a paint-besmirched skyscraper this week was a test to see how much graffiti could be removed in a day and the results were promising, said John Petty of KPC Development Co., which is set to take title of the stalled residential, hotel and retail project in a $517-million bankruptcy sale.A condition of the sale set by the city was that the graffiti that has appalled and amused millions of passersby for more than two years would be removed immediately, even though the sale might not officially close for six months.After the test run, Petty concluded that it will take less than 90 days to clean the three skyscrapers that stick out on the city skyline over Crypto.com Arena and the Harbor Freeway.

Petty will put the winning bidder among competing graffiti removers to work within two weeks, he said.He expects three crews, one for each tower, will start at the top and work their way down.Some of the work is physically risky and will require crews being lowered in uspended scaffolds known as swing stages used by window cleaners.

Petty acknowledged the nerve it took for graffiti artists to get some of their images displayed hundreds of feet in the air, lowering themselves by ropes from the top of buildings that are 42 and 54 stories tall after climbing stairs to the roofs.“They literally rappelled down and did tagging on their way down, taking huge risks,” Petty said.

“It is really a miracle that no one was killed doing this, but thank God nobody was, and we’re not going to get anybody hurt taking it off either.”The floors of th...