L.A. Revival : Downtown: There IS a There There

It is the mid-1920s, a boom time, and the sidewalks of the downtown shopping district are bustling. Electric streetcars clack and sway along thoroughfares, depositing shoppers at every corner. White-gloved matrons browse in shops, dine in tearooms, then scurry off to theater matinees for the latest William S. Hart or Rudolph Valentino adventure.

In search of Easter finery, mothers steer children to department store corners where mechanical windows delight passers-by. Inside, uniformed elevator operators transport customers to floor after floor filled with clothing, furniture and housewares.

It could be New York or Chicago or Boston. But in this case the red streetcars are those of Henry E. Huntington’s Pacific Electric Railway, the department stores are May Co., the Broadway, Bullock’s and J. W. Robinson’s, and the theater is the Orpheum on Broadway, which was then the core of a vital retail and entertainment district patronized by the growing, thriving populace of Los Angeles.

Even in the ‘20s, though, visitors to Southern California were starting to call Los Angeles “six suburbs in search of a city,” and now, 60 years and scores of sprawling regional shopping malls and industrial parks later, the description is even more apt.

Invoking an Insult

“There is no there there,” complained a Woodland Hills consultant, invoking Gertrude Stein’s famous insult to Oakland to capture a notion commonly held about downtown Los Angeles.

But that is an old story. Today, some of the same factors that drove merchants to the suburbs in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s seem to be luring them back downtown in the 1980s: a surge in real estate development and an influx of potential shoppers.

All this commercial growth, augmented by such cultural attractions as the Museum of Contemporary Art, has persuaded retailers once again to bet on downtown.

Although success is far from guaranteed, May Co. and Bullock’s have opened gleaming new stores in the last year, and Robinson’s has updated its faded landmark building. Vendors of career wear, cookies and computers have started signing up for ground-floor space in multimillion-dollar developments, paying rents that not long ago would have seemed prohibitive.

Slowly, new stores are clustering in the shadows of office towers, joining such 7th Street veterans as the Broadway, Robinson’s and Brooks Bros. Where new hotels are going up and stately old ones are being renovated, an occasional elegant shop is moving in, too. Braving the congestion, smog and construction tie-ups, these merchants are bringing more of a downtown flavor to the city’s burgeoning financial district as they woo an estimated 250,000 daytime workers.

‘Bodes Very Well’

“When you add in MOCA, galleries and new restaurants, it bodes very well for downtown in a very exciting and spirited mix,” said Lenore Hatch, vice president of marketing for Maguire-Thomas Partners, the developer of Crocker Center.

Of course, jaded Angelenos have heard about downtown revival before, only to see grand redevelopment plans die aborning. Meanwhile, areas like Westwood, Melrose Avenue and Pasadena have made good on plans to become destinations for shoppers and entertainment seekers.

For downtown retailers, success has been found primarily in small pockets--mostly in the melting pot areas of Chinatown, Little Tokyo and Broadway and in bargain havens like the garment and jewelry districts. A thriving shopping area in the financial district has for the most part proved elusive.

Sure, the streets may hop at lunchtime, but most downtown workers hit the freeways at day’s end without a backward glance, leaving merchants’ fortunes to rise or fall on the basis of midday business.

But momentum appears to be building. In the last year alone, striking changes have occurred in downtown retailing:

- At the partially completed Citicorp Plaza at 7th and Figueroa streets in the heart of the city’s new financial district, Bullock’s and May Co. have erected stores at an estimated total cost of more than $25 million to “anchor” dozens of upscale boutiques and fast-food restaurants. (May Co.’s move from 8th and Hill streets and Bullock’s return to downtown after a three-year absence bring the department store complement to four along a three-block stretch.)

- To the east along 7th Street, Robinson’s, the oldest and biggest department store site in town, has had a long-overdue face-lift.

- In between, at the old Barker Bros. building at 818 W. 7th St., specialty merchants catering to well-heeled professionals--among them Talbots, which sells classic clothing--are negotiating high-priced leases.

- To the northeast, MOCA, part of California Plaza, is drawing folks from the suburbs and out of town, while at nearby Crocker Center a restaurant called Stepps is packed noon and night with bankers and lawyers making deals over pasta. (Later, these professionals can go sweat off calories at the spiffy new YMCA a block away.)

- At 15-year-old Arco Plaza, 5th and Flower streets, the new Japanese owner is planning a redesign of the struggling, below-ground retail space.

Meanwhile, to the south, the area known as South Park has been cleared for further, long-planned development--with more condominiums (in addition to the already occupied Skyline project at 9th and Hope streets), shops, a fashion institute, restaurants and offices. The residences would add to a smallish community of in-town dwellers limited primarily to Bunker Hill, Little Tokyo and Chinatown.

Focus on Office Leases

To be sure, the developers’ prime focus is on leasing offices to law firms, banks and other companies seeking to establish or increase their presence in the epicenter of the Pacific Rim. But as Los Angeles grows in stature, stores as diverse as Sharper Image (executive toys), C & R Clothiers (moderate men’s wear), Daniel Cremieux and G. B. Harb & Son (high-priced men’s fashion) and Thomas Bros. Maps & Books (the company’s only retail store) are also finding that it is hip to be here among the upwardly mobile.

“For downtown to become really a major, vital center, it needs to be more than simply headquarters office space, and that’s one of the reasons to focus on retail components,” said Donald R. Spivack, senior project manager for the Community Redevelopment Agency.

“Retailers are recognizing that there’s a lot to be gotten by coming downtown,” said Kate Bartolo, downtown retail specialist for Coldwell Banker.

Figures compiled by Cushman Realty show that retail space in the central business district--Olive Street to the Harbor Freeway and 2nd to 9th streets--comes to 2 million square feet (well below the 2.9 million of South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, the area’s largest regional mall). Retailers account for about 8% of total office space of 24 million square feet, nearly double the 1979 figure, the firm said.

In terms of overall retail strength among large downtowns, Los Angeles ranked 11th in a recent study by Downtown Research Corp. that was based on 1982 figures, the latest available.

“L.A. came up quite high in spite of the image that a lot of people have,” said Edward Lawrence, the Chicago-based company’s president. “It really does have a vibrant downtown, with a tremendous amount of office construction in Bunker Hill and elsewhere that will bring more workers downtown.”

(Although some Southlanders say growth raises the specter of endless gridlock--especially on top of the snarls from Metro Rail construction--at least one participant in the boom is not fazed. “The more congestion,” chuckled Robert A. Ortiz, a senior vice president of Cushman Realty, “the more shoppers.”)

Other Cities’ Attempts

Los Angeles is not alone in trying to revitalize its downtown. Other cities investing heavily in comebacks are Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Washington, although they have the advantage of a large base of downtown residents.

“There’s no question that the major retailers . . . and developers of centers are finding downtowns very attractive--one of the new frontiers, I guess,” said Frank H. Spink, director of publications at the Urban Land Institute, a research and educational organization in Washington. “The best way to describe it is that downtown used to be the regional shopping center. Around it we put rings of centers, and (downtown) became the hole in the doughnut.”

The desertion of downtown Los Angeles started in the 1930s. “As the streetcar system went and the post-World War II boom occurred, downtown was not defined as the place to be,” Spink said. “It was the ‘no there there’ syndrome.”

To restore some “there,” downtown stores must draw not only workers and out-of-town visitors but also residents of nearby urban neighborhoods such as Hancock Park and Silver Lake.

Margaret Dietz, a Hancock Park real estate broker, did some Christmas shopping at Seventh Market Place, as the Citicorp mall is known, and found it “a nice, quiet place to shop--unfortunately quiet.” A former Manhattanite, she misses the downtown life style and “would like to see L.A. moving toward that.” She and her husband support the Music Center and MOCA but bemoan the fact that her husband’s co-workers are “young bankers who want to live at the beach.”

She found in the downtown stores a “huge inventory of merchandise and tremendous service” from sales associates who told her that the stores had a busy lunchtime business but were “dead the rest of the day.”

A bigger challenge will be to lure suburbanites such as Nancy Mansfield of Redondo Beach, who was not impressed with Seventh Market Place on a pre-Christmas foray.

By far her biggest gripe, she said, was with the confusing parking lot and its complicated payment machines (which the owner acknowledges are under study and might be removed). Mansfield, who works in an industrial area of downtown, also found the plaza’s multilevel, circular layout difficult to master and the escalators inadequately marked. (One retailing tenant noted that the open-air escalators occasionally break down in the rain.)

‘Problem Is Traffic’

“I think retailers are making a great effort to try to attract shoppers,” Mansfield said. “The problem is traffic. You get bogged down by the pedestrians.”

Mansfield, who considers mall-going a hobby, recalls shopping downtown as a child in the 1930s and ‘40s when her family lived off Wilshire Boulevard in the area now known as Miracle Mile.

For much of that time, “the only place to shop was downtown,” she said. But once May Co. put up a store at Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in 1939, her family would occasionally shop there instead. By the ‘60s, her “breakaway from downtown started, and now I avoid it like the plague.”

At least one real estate observer doubts that outlying residents will ever forsake the convenience of their regional malls to venture downtown.

“If you live in Pasadena, you’ll shop in Pasadena,” said David C. Lachoff, senior marketing consultant with Grubb & Ellis. “If you live in West L.A. and drive in five days a week, you won’t get in your car and drive in on a sixth.”

Changing such attitudes will be a slow process, acknowledges Allen I. Questrom, chairman of Bullock’s, which in 1983 abandoned its huge, unprofitable, deteriorating location on 7th between Broadway and Hill, having already agreed to reopen at Citicorp.

“The decision was to be in the downtown store to maintain downtown’s future,” Questrom said. “(The feeling was) that if all the stores pulled out of downtown, it would make it a less attractive place for people to live in during the day.”

However, he noted, “from a financial point of view, we’d have been better off not having a store downtown. . . . We will (eventually) make money in that store, but it will be a below-average rate of return.”

From his office window at 8th and Hope, Questrom pointed to sites of future office towers, from which the store expects to attract most of its customers. “I do not see, at least in the next 10 years, downtown becoming a major residential area,” he said. “The success of the store will be more the amount of office buildings that continue to locate downtown. We will have to learn to tailor to that work force.”

As a result, store general manager Kathryn L. McConville said, “we’ve geared our service and staffing toward that customer who needs to be helped quickly and possibly needs to have packages delivered.” Acting on such customers’ requests, the store has expanded its evening and weekend hours.

Departure From Tradition

The downtown Bullock’s marks a departure from traditional downtown department stores in two ways--merchandise and size. Instead of offering a full line of goods, it carries primarily career dressing and accessories, with limited home and gift items. And at 125,000 square feet, it is far smaller than the behemoths of old, which routinely filled 600,000 to 1 million square feet.

May Co. also scaled down. “The idea of what a department store is has changed from when that (old) downtown store was built (in the 1920s),” said Edgar S. Mangiafico, chairman of May Co. California. “It has always been our perspective that there obviously is a very significant role for retail in the center of the city. It was just not viable where it was.”

Although Citicorp’s retail tenants say they are bullish on downtown retailing, they have concerns about the plaza itself. “I would be eager for the center to fill,” McConville said. “I would like to see the occupancy rate improve. . . . When stores remain vacant, that doesn’t read well.”

Linda Menar, president and owner of Traditionally Suited, which sells updated career clothing for women, sees another negative. “I don’t understand why they can’t get a wonderful restaurateur and watering hole,” she said. “It needs a Stepps. Everyone around here goes there after work.”

But for the most part she is pleased. “The financial community is moving west, and I think this is the place to be.”

Constance L. Scherer, manager of retail for Seventh Market Place, owned by Prudential Insurance, said recently that the mall had 12 vacant spaces out of a total of 67, not counting May Co. and Bullock’s. To date, two businesses--a fast-food eatery called Muffin Oven and a print shop--have closed.

She defends the fledgling center, which had a piecemeal opening beginning last April, noting that the Beverly Center at Beverly and La Cienega boulevards “opened with a handful of tenants, and obviously that’s a very successful center.”

Rental Costs

In terms of rents, Scherer said the mall competes more with Beverly Center and Westside Pavilion than with other downtown developments. Whereas a women’s apparel store at Arco Plaza or Broadway Plaza will pay an annual fee of about $18 a square foot, Seventh Market Place generally charges $30 to $45 for apparel stores and $75 to $150 for food outlets. (Scherer said the third-level food court, with 12 eateries and seating for 600, has been the mall’s strongest draw, with some restaurants serving between 700 and 1,200 lunches daily.)

The older downtown malls--Arco Plaza, opened in 1972, and Broadway Plaza, opened a year later--are a study in contrasts.

Observers describe Arco’s below-ground, three-level retail space as cavernous and dingy and note that the mall has suffered from frequent turnover and the lack of a major anchor store.

“This is a tough center,” said Sharon A. Powell, president of Executive Forecast, an Arco Plaza tenant selling career clothing to women. The recent closing of a cafeteria subsidized by Arco hurt retailers on Level C, the lowest level. Powell is negotiating a lease at 818 W. 7th that will double her rent but provide street-level exposure.

Shuwa Investments Corp., the Japanese-owned company that bought the Arco complex last September, acknowledges that the retail space “needs improvement.” Said Vice President Charles Boyer: “We’re juggling around the whole leasing situation.”

Broadway Plaza, on the other hand, has not had a vacancy since the 1984 closing of the bankrupt Joseph Magnin, space that was subsequently filled by two successful stores--the Limited and Victoria’s Secret.

Catering to Workers

“Broadway Plaza consistently--and successfully--caters to the clerical work force,” said Bartolo of Coldwell Banker. The open, skylighted lobby also provides easy, pleasant access for office workers and hotel visitors, she said. (The plaza’s Broadway store was the first new department store built in downtown Los Angeles in nearly 70 years.)

While downtown boosters maintain that it is only a matter of time before Los Angeles’ core becomes a place where yuppies will work and play, others do not see it--yet.

“When I knock at the corporate doors of Atlantic Richfield and (other) major businesses based there, there’s still a hint that downtown per se is not a primary destination,” said Robert H. McNulty, a Bay Area native who is president and founder of Partners for Livable Places, a Washington-based coalition that advises communities on how to develop without sacrificing quality of life. “The sophisticated pleasure of being downtown in New York, Boston, Chicago or Vancouver is totally lacking in downtown L.A.”