Stairway Linking Old and New L.A. Opens : Downtown: Steps climb five stories along a series of terraces connecting the skyscrapers of Bunker Hill to the historic city around the Central Library.

Up among the spiffy new skyscrapers of Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill--the nucleus of the promised 24-hour downtown of the future--the hot topic Thursday was “steps.”

Not that everybody understood what it meant. “I thought they were talking about a new restaurant,” said Tracy Oliver, a 33-year-old receptionist.

No, not another Stepps, the trendy downtown eatery, but 103 stairsteps descending from the new L.A. on the hill to the old Los Angeles along 5th Street. The steps extend from where Hope Street dead-ends at 4th Street down to 5th Street, directly opposite the Central Library.

Office workers like Oliver may shrug their shoulders and wonder what the fuss is about, but the true believers of the downtown dream--people in City Hall, the Community Redevelopment Agency, the offices of the Maguire Thomas Partnership--do not blush when they compare the city’s newest and grandest public stairway with the romantic, celebrated Spanish Steps of Rome.

When the downtown powers-that-be on Thursday performed ribbon-cutting duties on the $12-million Bunker Hill Steps, it marked the end of an 11-year planning effort and fulfilled dreams of the psychics of urban planning. The stairway climbs five stories along a series of winding terraces on the west side of the 73-story First Interstate tower, the city’s tallest building.

Where once there was a forbiddingly massive wall of concrete along 5th, believers like developer Rob Maguire envision the steps as an oasis in the heart of the city--a place set to the tune of street musicians and scented with cafe au lait . Bistros that are planned for the terraces will do brisk business, they say, while the sound of cascading water soothes the nerves.

Maguire, whose firm built the First Interstate tower and has shaped much of the new downtown skyline, hailed the steps as the link between the new downtown and such historic sites as the Central Library, the Biltmore and Pershing Square. Maguire reveled in recalling the moment of “Aha!” when planners figured out how they would redesign the heart of downtown’s modern business district.

San Francisco architect Lawrence Halprin, designer of the stairway, likened the “Aha!” to the conception of a child and the unveiling to the birth. He preached the gospel of the new downtown.

“Great cities are not made by automobiles, freeways and high-rises,” Halprin told an assembly of movers, shakers and assorted swells. “Basically they are made by open spaces and the people who use those open spaces.”

But Oliver and other office workers were taking a more pedestrian view of the new, improved Bunker Hill. In linking the new and historic downtown, they note, the steps also promise to link the denizens of the new downtown with the denizens of the old, including the street people. Panhandlers that are commonplace in other parts of downtown started making regular appearances about two years ago on Bunker Hill, said Pat Everett, a dispatcher for the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers.

Although the steps are a public right-of-way, they remain private property, said Jim Anderson, Maguire Thomas’ project manager. The firm plans to place a security guard on the steps, he said, and panhandling will not be tolerated.

“If someone wants to walk from one end to another, that’s fine. If someone wants to sit and enjoy it, that’s fine,” Anderson said. “There’s no soliciting . . . and the thought of someone trying to live in the bushes--we won’t let that happen.”

The steps, which already are being celebrated as a transcendent achievement, are viewed on more practical terms by people like Everett and her co-worker, Doris Howard. The steep grade along Grand Avenue is called Cardiac Hill. Bunker Hill workers now navigate labyrinthine routes just to avoid it.

The best thing about the Bunker Hill Steps, Everett and Howard said, isn’t the culture to come. Nor, for that matter, is it the steps. No, it’s something the Romans don’t even have.

Flanking the west side of the stairway is an escalator.