No Bunker Mentality : Downtown Plan Would Save Old Buildings, Link Areas

Architects and urban planners view the creation of modern downtown Los Angeles as a model of what not to do: Pick a historic area, level it and build a string of office buildings. Isolate the area. Choose a group of wealthy business leaders to make the key decisions. Design the area in slavish obeisance to the automobile.

This is how Bunker Hill was developed, under a 20-year plan. But that blueprint expires this year and city leaders are preparing a new 20-year plan that differs from the old one in every respect.

The new Downtown Strategic Plan--scheduled to be released next month--seeks to preserve historic buildings rather than tear them down. It is geared to linking downtown neighborhoods rather than isolating them. It would narrow streets and widen sidewalks in deference to pedestrians.

Rather than promoting towering residential high-rises and trying to lure people to live in them, it would encourage scattered collections of small townhouse neighborhoods. Instead of clearing land and building more skyscrapers, it would seek to attract commercial tenants to the near-empty historic buildings east of Bunker Hill.

And overseeing it all would be a diverse 60-member advisory committee representing everyone from corporate leaders to neighborhood groups to advocates for the homeless.

If adopted, the plan has the potential, its supporters say, to do what many consider impossible in Los Angeles--create a traditional city center with parks, thriving residential neighborhoods, historic districts and night life that defines the downtowns of great cities.

Still, the plan faces tremendous obstacles. In the wake of the riots, there is greater competition among communities for scarce redevelopment funds. And critics of the plan say there is a glut of office space and that as a result of the recession the plan’s ambitious goals may be unrealistic. They also question why this plan would be more successful in luring residents than the existing one, which promoted a “24-hour downtown” but failed.

The new downtown plan has a much greater chance to succeed, the plan’s consultants say, because its approach is more feasible during an era of tight budgets. And because it is a 20-year-plan, they say, the glut of office space and the economic downturn can be weathered.

“This plan will be taking advantage of the historic buildings downtown, linking the various downtown districts, taking back the sidewalks for pedestrians,” said Robert Harris, co-chairman of the plan’s citizens advisory committee and former dean of USC’s School of Architecture. “The kind of planning we did in the past downtown is simply not acceptable today.”

Bunker Hill was created under urban renewal principles that were applied during the 1960s to many downtowns throughout the country but now are renounced by most planners as too expensive and likely to result in an environment that is too sterile. Redevelopment agencies bought huge parcels from small landowners, evicted the residents and leveled the buildings. Then they conveyed the property to developers, often at a discount.

The approach now favored by planners and architects--and featured in the new plan--integrates smaller-scale development with existing structures. This approach is more feasible, easier to finance and more likely to gain political and public approval, Harris said.

To attract more business downtown, preliminary drafts of the plan propose the creation of retail markets built around the wholesale produce, toy, flower, jewelry, furniture and clothing marts. Also suggested are downtown institutes for apparel, jewelry and furniture design to train manufacturing workers, assist new firms and aid in marketing and exporting.

Although the $2-million plan is financed by the Community Redevelopment Agency, some of its proposals could be funded by private industry through assessment districts, in which property owners in various sections of downtown would pay fees to improve the area, said John Spalding, the CRA’s director of planning and urban design. Other proposals, including the creation of transportation links between districts, could be funded by government grants or loans. The redevelopment agency, which provided financing for past downtown development, is another source of funding.

The exact amount needed to carry out the downtown plan probably will not be determined until a final draft is completed early next year.

Competition is fierce for dwindling government funds, but the plan’s consultants say downtown has much to offer potential investors.

Downtown is the financial center for the city, a theater and arts center and the city’s historical center--where the original pueblo was founded. And, because downtown has the city’s highest concentration of office towers with the potential for more density, it soon will be the region’s hub for multibillion-dollar subway and rail systems.

Before the plan becomes the official blueprint for the future of downtown, there will be a series of public hearings, and the proposal must be approved by the CRA’s board of directors, the Planning Commission and the City Council. To succeed, the plan must be a compelling enough document to convince government officials that a revitalized downtown will benefit residents throughout Los Angeles.

In the best of times, it would be difficult to replan the Central City. But in the wake of the riots, the plan’s consultants have to contend with another set of priorities.

Many residents of South-Central Los Angeles resent all the financing that was directed toward downtown during the past few decades. They have seen the creation of the gleaming downtown skyline as their neighborhoods deteriorated.

“People want more attention paid to their own neighborhoods,” said Lori Gay, director of Neighborhood Housing Service, a nonprofit lender and developer in South-Central. “Especially now, after the unrest, people are saying: ‘Hey, it’s our turn now. Let’s invest the planning and resources in our neighborhoods.’ ”

But the leaders of the downtown plan contend that they will be able to show how a revitalized downtown will benefit low-income areas during a series of neighborhood “outreach meetings.” The east side of downtown--with the garment center, light industry and the produce and flower markets--employs almost 100,000 people.

People from South-Central Los Angeles and other areas work there and have a stake in seeing these industries thrive and others established, Councilwoman Rita Walters said.

“I don’t see it as an either-or situation. I think we can help South-Central and still give downtown the attention it needs,” said Walters, whose district encompasses downtown. “Helping keep downtown economically viable will help everyone in the city.”

If there is a single symbol that exposes the frailty of the city’s last 20-year plan--known inside planning circles as the Silverbook--it might be a section of Hill Street in the shadow of Bunker Hill.

When Bunker Hill was developed it was virtually impossible to walk directly from the old city center to the new office district. A sheer wall of inaccessible, no-entry buildings and concrete barriers separated the districts. The area has been opened up a bit recently, but for those unfamiliar with the serpentine walkways, it still is a challenge to find a direct route from Hill Street to Bunker Hill.

Architect Kurt Meyer, former CRA board chairman during the 1970s when Bunker Hill was being developed, contends that this was no accident. The corporate elite who developed Bunker Hill were so intent on isolating the area from the old city center along Broadway and Spring Street that they even opposed rebuilding Angel’s Flight, the funicular that connected the two areas since the turn of the century.

“The people building Bunker Hill wanted a kind of moat along Hill Street to protect this new office district from the poor and the minorities down below,” Meyer said. “They made that absolutely clear.”

The Silverbook succeeded in directing the growth of an office tower district on Bunker Hill, but its plans for a vast residential district were abandoned. It proposed leveling nine square blocks, creating a large park--with a lake in the center--and encircling it with a string of residential high-rises and hotels. The plan failed because it proved impossible to finance the vast property purchases that would have been required.

Before Bunker Hill was leveled, it was a residential area, filled with small Victorian houses, Gothic mansions and Queen Anne-style apartments. Most residences were dilapidated, but they represented a significant architectural heritage, said Robert Winter, co-author of “Architecture in Los Angeles, A Compleat Guide.”

The committee that developed Bunker Hill and spawned the Silverbook was composed of about 20 corporations, whose motives for developing downtown often were questioned. Many critics contend that the corporate leaders placed a greater priority on protecting their investments and generating new business for themselves than on creating a plan that would aid the entire downtown.

“These business leaders were misleading people in order to serve their own self-interest,” said former CRA Chairman Meyer. “This was really the last hurrah of the great white fathers who dictated to everyone the future of the city.”

Although Bunker Hill has been the subject of much criticism, its successes should not be forgotten, said Ed Avila, CRA administrator. Bunker Hill attracted much business and investment to a moribund area and vastly increased the city’s tax base. Its shortcomings, he said, will be addressed by the next 20-year plan.

Bunker Hill cannot be appreciably changed now, but it can be reconnected to other sections of downtown. The plan may propose another funicular, in addition to Angel’s Flight, and a series of interlocking subway and light-rail extensions, trolley lines, walkways, plazas and arcades. This would make it much easier for pedestrians to traverse a downtown that is a microcosm of the city--large, sprawling, automobile-oriented, composed of numerous, disconnected districts.

The downtown plan focuses on the area bordered by the Hollywood, Harbor and Santa Monica freeways and Alameda Street.

A key goal of the new plan is to attract 100,000 new residents to downtown, said architects Elizabeth Moule and Stefanos Polyzoides, who have designed innovative developments such as the proposed 1,000-acre Playa Vista project near Marina del Rey. Moule and Polyzoides, who head the downtown plan’s urban design consulting team, are working on the project with consultants from 10 other transportation, planning and urban design firms.

To attract residents to downtown, Moule said, the plan emphasizes high quality but smaller-scale developments over the high-rise residential towers once considered a key to downtown’s future. These projects--some of which would be designed for low- to moderate-income residents--are seen as being easier to finance during the credit squeeze of the 1990s.

A “demonstration project” of one of these mini-neighborhoods was drafted recently by the plan’s consultants to show its feasibility. They proposed locating the small downtown development, which could provide low- and moderate-income housing, in an area south of Olympic Boulevard. It would include 175 units of courtyard apartments and townhouses, none more than four stories high, built around a one-acre park. The retail and commercial buildings also would be limited to a few stories, but the project would be designed to accommodate office towers and other buildings on the edge of the property.

These mini-developments would be more likely to attract investors and residents, Moule said. Many Southern Californians, even if they live in a more urban setting, want “more of a connection to the weather, the street, the outdoors,” she said. Unlike East Coast residents, many are unwilling to be entombed in high-rise apartment buildings. That is one of the reasons, she said, that previous downtown plans have failed.

Although the CRA was instrumental in paving over Bunker Hill in the 1960s, one of the key goals of this plan is the preservation of 300 historic buildings in the Central City.

The old downtown, just east of Bunker Hill, has hundreds of classic beaux-arts buildings from the early 1900s, Winter said. They have been largely overlooked because, from the street level, they are ordinary looking with their large picture windows, designed for businesses such as department stores. But the elaborate roof lines and the detailing outside the upper floors are spectacular, Winter said, with Art Deco, baroque and other classic styles.

“If you just walk by, you may not notice these buildings,” Winter said. “Very few people in L.A. realize what a treasure-trove of historic buildings there is downtown. This isn’t just 10 or 20 major monuments, but an entire district.”

As a result, the plan’s supporters hope to save structures by district, rather than on a building-by-building basis. They propose naming sections between Broadway and Main Street historic preservation zones, and would create a development corporation to market them.

The consultants also recommend directing the growth of millions of square feet of new office space to other areas of downtown. This could be built sometime in the next two decades when the economy improves.

Some critics have questioned focusing all this attention on downtown Los Angeles when there are numerous mini-downtowns, such as Westwood and Century City. But the plan’s consultants say a deteriorating downtown--such as Detroit’s--can adversely affect an entire region.

And, according to architect Polyzoides, a thriving downtown can keep many residential areas in the city livable. Placid, leafy, single-family neighborhoods, he said, “are one of L.A’s most cherished traditions.”

“Residents complain about high-rises sprouting in their neighborhoods and blocking their light--and they’re right,” Polyzoides said. “We should put high-rises and commercial buildings where they belong--in places like downtown.”

Blueprint for the Central City

The downtown strategic plan will influence planning, design, historic preservation and commercial and residential development in the central city for the next two decades. Overseeing the plan is a 60-member advisory committee representing everyone from corporate leaders to neighborhood groups to advocates for the homeless.