The LA Times is running with the Eli Broad story. Today they take a comparative look at two of the three sites Broad is considering. You’ll have to read Christopher Hawthorne’s excellent Culture Monster piece to get the full side-by-side but here we’ve got a description of each opportunity:

• The Beverly Hills site is one that Broad has had his eye on for some time. It is a narrow, arrow-shaped parcel of land squeezed between Santa Monica and Little Santa Monica boulevards, and stretching from Wilshire southwest to Charleville Boulevard. It is across the street from the old CAA headquarters, designed by I.M. Pei, and directly between the Peninsula Hotel to the east and the Beverly Hilton to the west. The site is now occupied by a collection of two-story retail buildings opening onto Little Santa Monica, including a Starbucks at the northeastern end.

• In Santa Monica, meanwhile, the museum would fill a spot two blocks in from the beach, between the Civic Courthouse and the Civic Auditorium. The space is now occupied by a partially covered surface parking lot. It is directly across Main Street from the Rand Corp. headquarters, which opened in 2004 and is by the same architects, Paul Danna and Jose Palacios, who designed the new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters downtown. The site is just west of a colorful and much-published parking garage by the Santa Monica firm Moore Ruble Yudell.

For Eli Broad, a Take of Two Sites (Culture Monster)