Hit on Broadway? : Survey Points to Mall Success in Downtown

A hit on Broadway: That’s how the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency views the mall that is planned on downtown’s busiest street.

It’s difficult to imagine, looking at Broadway now--its small stores and restaurants crowded with eager buyers. Will these same shoppers be drawn to a large, enclosed complex?

The Redevelopment Agency and mall developers are betting on it, based, at least in part, on a survey that has just been released.

Prepared by the Wilshire Organization with the help of Juarez & Associates Inc. for the Redevelopment Agency, the survey polled 279 consumers who reported that they usually shop on Broadway. None was an occasional or one-time shopper.

Prefer to Shop in Mall

More than half said that they dislike the “generally dirty sidewalks and streets,” that Broadway is “perceived by them as being an area of apparent high levels of street crime,” and that “they would prefer to shop in an enclosed mall if one was available to them, because they expect it to be cleaner, safer and more comfortable than shopping on the open street.” In fact, the survey found that “60% responded that they would shop in such a mall on Broadway if one existed.”

The mall will provide validated parking. However, the survey found that the typical shopper comes to Broadway once a week and arrives by bus.

The typical shopper was also described as “a Hispanic female from Mexico, between 22 and 34 years of age. She is a housewife in a household earning no more than $10,000 a year. She usually shops with others; the typical shopping group consists of three persons, and the group typically spends $45 per shopping outing,” mainly on clothing or shoes.

Sixty-two business operators or owners were also surveyed, and more than two-thirds of them called for “a general immediate clean-up of Broadway, more foot patrol services, the relocation of drunks and beggars to Skid Row apartments, and the creation of a merchants association.”

The new mall will provide security features, and the Redevelopment Agency is expected to provide $1.1 million during the fiscal year 1985-’86 in an ongoing program to replace street and sidewalk surfaces and provide loans to upgrade storefronts.

Copies of the survey are available from the Redevelopment Agency’s department of public information in the Banco Popular Building at 354 S. Spring St.