An L.A. Kind of Place

Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when an idea dies. But not this time. Today, the Los Angeles Theatre Center closes its doors, and with it goes a certain idea about the nature of downtown Los Angeles.

That idea, born of hubris a decade ago, suggests that our downtown can--and should--grow into something resembling, say, downtown Chicago. A place with social vigor where people live as well as work, where they dine at favorite joints called Tony’s, where they wander into the night for the urban adventure.

The Community Redevelopment Agency, which also brought us Bunker Hill, so believed in this idea that it threw $27 million at the theater center on Spring Street. That money was supposed to create a cultural core around which would grow a city neighborhood. And then another neighborhood, and so on.

Twenty-seven million dollars. This was social engineering at its most expensive. And it failed utterly. When the LATC brings down the curtain for the last time tonight, it will die isolated and alone on Spring Street.

Understand, I do not intend to blame the LATC for the passing of the futile dream about downtown. The LATC’s tumble into insolvency was simply the last in a long series of failures downtown, most of them less visible and less celebrated.

Remember, for example, the loft movement? It lasted, in a nascent form, for about five years. It lasted until the artists and creative types who moved into the abandoned factories started to ask questions of themselves. Namely, why were they dodging drunks downtown when they could go out to Venice, pay the same rent, and dodge drunks next to the beach?

And so the loft movement faded. The old Atomic Cafe, which had sprung up to serve the artists, came and went. Ditto the Downtown L.A. Cafe. Ditto half a dozen others.

And then there were the condo conversions. A whole district of empty office buildings was designated to be reborn as condominiums. These were intended, not for artists, but for families who wanted a taste of city life.

Except no one did. A couple of buildings were converted and a few pioneers moved in. And there the pioneers remained, all alone, until the truth was finally faced: downtown L.A. was not New York or Chicago, and never would be. So, one by one, they moved out.

I had a friend who was unlucky enough to buy one of the converted condos on Spring Street. She was formerly a New Yorker and invited me over for dinner one night. I remember walking through the new rooms with new plaster and new floors, everything splendidly fresh, and then sitting down at her table next to the window and peering outward at an urban landscape so dark and bleak it could have been Beirut.

She noticed me staring and shrugged. Maybe it will change soon, she said. But it didn’t.

There are some who would argue, I am sure, that the downtown idea has not necessarily died with the passing of the LATC. They would make much of the success of the Music Center and certain parts of Bunker Hill.

But these are false successes. The Music Center flourishes in lonely splendor at the top of the hill, the consumer of huge annual subsidies. As for Bunker Hill, have you visited its hot spots after the bankers and lawyers have headed home for the night? It is as empty as a train station.

No, the downtown idea sleeps with the fishes. And we should face that truth before the city or the CRA spends another $27 million pretending it ain’t so.

The reasons are simple enough. Downtown L.A. is different from Chicago or Boston because Los Angeles itself is different. Decades ago, some natural law decided that our night life would concentrate west of La Brea. And there it has stayed, moving slowly westward with each passing year. There never was, and never will be, reason for a return to downtown.

As for the failure of the downtown pioneers, the answer is much the same. Los Angeles offers too many tasty alternatives. People will never choose life in a box if they can have a piece of a garden. And as bad as L.A. has become, there remain many, many gardens.

Consider my friend who lived in the box on Spring Street. She finally decided to leave her condo, and sold it at a loss. Then she moved to Sierra Madre.

And she’s there now. She has a small house with a small yard and a big dog. Each morning, she walks her dog down the sidewalks, under the trees of Sierra Madre. She loves it, she says, and sees no reason why anyone would live anywhere else.