Needed for New Downtown: Linkages

From the distant vantage point of the Harbor and Santa Monica freeways, downtown Los Angeles is beginning to look more and more interesting.

The recently topped crown of the cylindrical First Interstate World Center, fashioned by the architectural office of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, glistens, as do the wall panels being applied to the 777 Tower designed by Cesar Pelli.

These and less ambitious efforts are lending the skyline a diversity of styles and shapes that happily are incrementally overcoming the boxy, boring buildings in the severe Modernistic mold that has dominated downtown for the last few decades.

Also heartening is the restoration effort along Broadway, most notably of the Grand Central Market and Million Dollar Building by Ira Yellin, the start of construction of the expansion of the Convention Center, and of Phase 2 of California Plaza on Bunker Hill, consisting of an office tower and performance plaza.

And then there are numerous other projects of promise in the offing.

These include a bold mixed-use project covering 6 acres just east of the Harbor Freeway at 9th Street, labeled Metropolis and designed by Michael Graves in a multicolored pastiche of classical allusions; Grand Avenue Plaza, at 8th Street and Grand Avenue, featuring an elegant office tower by Richard Keating of the local office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and at 1st and Grand, a singular concert hall and questionable hotel by Frank O. Gehry.

But architecturally interesting as they are, these projects will not make downtown that much more engaging. From my perspective, downtown remains fractured, much like the region itself, its parts greater than the whole.

The abiding cliche describing Los Angeles as “40 (now read 140) suburbs in search of a city” could, with some license, be rephrased to describe the downtown as “40 clusters in search of a downtown.”

There is the Broadway and Spring Street historic district, the civic and music centers, California Plaza, Bunker Hill, the commercial core along Flower Street, the Central Library cluster, Citicorp Plaza and the convention center and South Park, each with its own image.

But instead of forming a downtown of diversity and distinction, the clusters, for all intents and purposes, are isolated. Needed is what urban designers call linkages; planners call pedestrian-friendly connections; romanticists, paseos; science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, a yellow brick road, and what most people would describe as an interesting, safe street, a street for window shopping and looking.

Author and urbanist William H. Whyte calls them the rivers of life of a city.

The concept of linkages for downtown is not new. Public and private people, organizations and agencies have been urging them for years, in workshops, symposiums, proposals, plans and speeches.

“Linkages are absolutely critical to the future of downtown,” says Community Redevelopment Agency administrator John Tuite. “It is what is going to enliven and strengthen the historic district and every other district in downtown.”

However, with a variety of projects now coming on line, being discussed and debated, and taking form, I feel the concept again should be emphasized. Too often those involved in pushing a particular project lose perspective.

Among the planned linkages is the Angel’s Flight funicular connecting Broadway to California Plaza, Grand Avenue connecting California Plaza to the Music and Civic centers, the Bunker Hill steps connecting Bunker Hill to the Central Library, the Hope Street promenade connecting the library to South Park and 7th Street connecting the historic districts to the Citicorp and Metropolis developments.

These linkages cannot be afterthoughts. They are not decorations on the cake of downtown, but rather its foundation.

Happily, the Bunker Hill steps, as designed with a flair by Lawrence Halprin, are nearing completion. But the other linkages appear to be floundering at the bottom of the list of public and private priorities. This also includes two critical linchpins in the linkages, the redevelopment of Pershing Square and the Central Library’s west lawn.

Another concern of mine is 7th Street between Olive and Grand. Once the city’s prime retail location, the street has deteriorated badly and desperately needs new life for the sake of the persevering landmark business there, such as Clifton’s, and to help channel energy and investments to the threatened Broadway and Spring Street historic districts.

That is why I think it is time for preservationists to bite the bullet and hold a wake for the vacated 1912 Brockman and 1917 Coulter buildings. The buildings are simply not in the same category, alas, as the Pan Pacific Auditorium and the Ambassador Hotel.

What should be saved is the spirit of 7th Street, and that I feel can be done by urging that the new hotel proposed for the Brockman and Coulter site respect the street’s 150-foot cornice height limit and reflect the texture and tone of neighboring historic structures. An absolute must would be street-level shops to enrich the sidewalk and engage pedestrians.

After all, the future of downtown will not rest with the buildings, architecturally and historically interesting as they may be, but with the people, working and living there, and enjoying the streets and the sights.

West Hollywood is one of the more gerrymandered cities in Southern California, its shape an aberration of a Rorschach test. And although in many ways the city is very together, it desperately needs a civic focal point, a village green of sorts, edged by community and governmental buildings.

That is why conceptually and aesthetically the proposed civic center south of Santa Monica Boulevard on San Vicente Boulevard makes so much sense. As designed by Edmund Chang and Roger Sherman, assisted by Gruen Associates, Michael Van Valkenburgh and POD, the center is appropriately user-friendly. It also creates as much parkland as it takes, with the city promising more elsewhere.

The project, which is on the ballot this Tuesday in West Hollywood, deserves to be approved.