NEXT L.A. : Going for a Stroll : MTA hopes to use walkways to draw people Downtown. The $15-million plan calls for safe, easy access.

There are those who say Los Angeles is a heartless city, that Downtown is dead. No one heads Downtown to “just hang out,” and if they do it’s a one-stop affair, perhaps an evening concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Once the applause dies down, it’s straight back to the ‘burbs in the comfort of an automobile.

Wrong, say the folks at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, who have a plan--a simple and even inexpensive one at that--to turn Downtown Los Angeles into a bustling 24-hour mini-metropolis.

How? By getting people to walk.

The project, dubbed “Angels Walk,” would create pedestrian corridors linking five Downtown districts--Bunker Hill, the Music Center and Civic Center, Chinatown, Union Station and El Pueblo, and the Little Tokyo and artist loft section--to City Hall.

Naturally, because this is an MTA project the walking paths also will connect the public transit systems, such as the subway and bus lines.

“I believe that for any transit system to be successful, many factors enter the picture,” said Nick Patsaouras, an MTA board member and the driving force behind Angels Walk. “One, obviously is ridership, and two is the effect the system will have on the urban landscape in general.

“Angels Walk is very much a concept about easy and safe access through the existing street system,” he said, “but in the process we would be able to link the historic and ethnic groups of Los Angeles.”

By making Downtown pedestrian-friendly, to both Angelenos and tourists, Patsaouras said the effect would be tremendous. “Look at Third Street Promenade [in Santa Monica] and Old Town Pasadena,” he said, pointing to two irrefutably successful revitalization efforts.

“If you create a pleasant, interesting environment, people will walk,” he said. And walkers will shop, dine and hang out, the theory goes, bringing in tons of cash that Downtown may be missing out on right now.

A perfect example of how Downtown goes undiscovered takes place every weekend. According to MTA studies, about 100 baptisms take place at the churches in the Olvera Street area each weekend, but the baptism parties never venture to the Children’s Museum, located only a few hundred feet away. The MTA found that, in fact, the museum gets no pedestrian traffic.

Even walking into Downtown from Union Station is convoluted. He would have killed for a camcorder, Patsaouras said, the day he was standing at the entrance of Union Station when two women and their children approached and asked for directions to Olvera Street.

When Patsaouras pointed across Alameda Street, the group walked left and right, confused, then returned to where he stood. One of the women demanded, “How the hell do you get there?”

“It was only 300 feet across,” Patsaouras said. “People just cannot get there.”

As part of the Angels Walk project, plans for Union Station include a pedestrian plaza that would cross directly from the train station to Olvera Street, a project that might eventually include relocating Los Angeles Street and building an underground parking lot.

Among the big supporters of Angels Walk is Nelson Rising, the chief executive officer of Catellus Development Corp., which owns 50 acres in Downtown Los Angeles, including Union Station. “Here we have the center for transportation for the region,” Rising said. “We are very interested in what happens in connecting Union Station, we’re interested in how we connect to Chinatown, the artist district, to Olvera Street and the historic plaza.”

Although such goals of the MTA and Catellus may seem too costly for a cash-strapped city, the main thrust of Angels Walk would only cost about $15 million, Patsaouras said.

MTA officials say all they really have to do to establish Angels Walk is to revamp the streetscape so that there is a clear path through Downtown. The concept calls for using additional street lighting, benches, signs and landscaping to define pedestrian corridors, mostly along existing sidewalks. To enhance the atmosphere, the MTA is working to attract vendors and even street performers in key areas.

Construction is about to begin on the first spoke of Angels Walk at the foot of another revitalization project, Angels Flight. The historic funicular railway that connected Downtown shops to homes on Bunker Hill for much of this century is being restored to connect office towers with the Red Line subway and attractions such as the Grand Central Market, the busy produce and ethnic food marketplace on Broadway.

Within 90 days, MTA workers will be repainting the old brick buildings next to the market and start building an outdoor park so people can watch Angels Flight and eat lunch.

“Tourists will flock to it,” Patsaouras said. “And that means money.”

Another phase, to be unveiled in about five years in the Little Tokyo/artist loft district, would turn 3rd Street around Santa Fe Avenue into a pedestrian-only walkway dotted with hundreds of plum trees and outdoor sculptures by local artists. The focus would be on a new Red Line subway station.

The L.A. Artcore, an artists group with several galleries in Los Angeles, recently helped organize a noontime panel discussion with the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce to educate the public about this little-known project.

Artcore members see bringing the art community together with Little Tokyo as an exciting opportunity. “It can bring art into the community, to show the arts as an asset,” said Sandy Bleifer, an artist and Artcore coordinator. “Public art is what makes a city, whether it’s the Trevi fountains or the Watts Towers.”

Patsaouras said that once groups such as L.A. Artcore attach themselves to Angels Walk, developers will want to build shops, cafes and restaurants along the Angels Walk routes.

“I am a believer of the eventual strength of Downtown,” he said. “We are around the corner from seeing it become a 24-hour city.”

Patsaouras confidently says, “People will walk.”