When it opens in less than five months, the $55 million, 40,000 square foot Madame Tussauds wax museum will fill in one of the last remaining surface parking lots on the western stretch of Hollywood Boulevard (just west of Grauman's Chinese). A press release notes that the three-story, Michael Rotondi-designed structure at Orange Drive is the first time Ms. Tussaud has ever built a wax museum from the ground-up; there's already eight MT museums, located in places like London, New York, Hong Kong, and Vegas (Rotondi is with RoTo Architects, the group behind many LA structures including the Fallen Firefighters Museum). The museum is also hyping the new wax figures of Sasha Fierce, aka Beyonce, and Jamie Foxx; both figures cost $300,000 each. Ironically, just as Madame fills in some dead space, Virgin Records is closing their doors just a few steps away. And speaking of urban infill, right around the corner, the former Burger King, and adjacent parking lot, on Highland is slowly turning into the Jefferson at Hollywood apartments.
Hollywood's Madame Tussauds Opening This Summer
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