USC Plans $900-million Shopping and Residential Upgrade

 USC says it wants what many other big city universities have: an attractive, lively place next to campus for students and faculty to shop, dine, watch movies and just hang out.

In what is described as the most ambitious construction project in South Los Angeles in a generation, the university plans to replace an outdated shopping center with a retail, cinema and hotel complex that would also include dorms for about 5,000 students.

It is being designed in USC's signature Mediterranean style by the Boston-based architecture firm Elkus Manfredi, which worked on the Grove and the Americana outdoor malls in Los Angeles and Glendale, and on campus buildings at Harvard University and other schools. For more information about the story, click here. [via LA Times]