New Building as Catalyst

The erection of a 90-foot-high, four-block-long steel-trussed “celestial vault,” complete with digitized laser show, has transformed the fortunes of Las Vegas’ Fremont Street. With the swish of an architectural wand, the tawdry and crime-ridden streets that once characterized Glitter Gulch have metamorphosed into a giant, pedestrian, enclosed, urban entertainment experience, filled with throngs of visitors and ringing with the sound of busy cash registers.

Conceived by self-described “place-maker” Jon Jerde--responsible for such projects as CityWalk at Universal City, Horton Plaza in San Diego and the makeover of Los Angeles for the 1984 Olympic Games--the Fremont Street experience is the centerpiece of a revitalization engineered by casino operators and the city of Las Vegas in an collective effort to stop the economic decay of what was the gambling mecca’s downtown.

Regardless of whether one approves of the mallization of a beloved pop landmark or the Draconian measures that went into its realization--the Fremont plan involved purging the area through a vigilant public safety and clean-up campaign, and the appropriation of surrounding, blighted land through eminent domain--the “experience” is also an undeniable economic success, and testimony to the transformative power of architecture and urban design.

The renewal of Fremont Street has been effective because it combined a dramatic architectural gesture with inspired leadership, economic commitment to the area as well as a use for the design that was relevant to the community.

If it can work for the profane, perhaps it can work for the sacred. The proposed rebuilding of St. Vibiana in Los Angeles’ downtown represents an act of faith in the potential for a building to act as a catalyst for rehabilitation of a community.

Such faith is not misplaced. Numerous other examples of state-funded, privately developed and grass-roots-sponsored projects reveal that, when a new building is right for the community, it can be an architectural embodiment of collective hope and meaning.

This can be illustrated in many striking, and often controversial, civic landmarks--such as the Sydney Opera House in Australia or the Grands Projects and Pompidou Center in Paris.

Spearheaded by former French President Georges Pompidou, with the support of the local community, the insertion of this now immensely popular, primary-colored, pop-tech repository of culture into a blighted area generated a full-scale rehabilitation of the historic districts of the Marais and Les Halles.

As if to upstage his predecessors, and leave an architectural legacy worthy of Louis XIV, President Francois Mitterrand, in the 1980s, used his time in office to oversee construction of monumental Grands Progects, such as the glass Pyramid at the Louvre, designed by I.M. Pei. Though a drain on the national coffers, building these new landmarks created excitement and generated widespread urban renewal that was, and is, the envy of Europe.

Despite horrendous problems and cost overruns during construction, the Sydney Opera House emerged as an icon for the city and engine of economic development for the hitherto unexploited Circular Key area of the old liner docks.

But a catalyst can also take the form of more modest gestures--such as carving loft spaces out of an unused warehouse at 80 Green Street in Soho, in Manhattan. This radical notion, conceived by George Macunias of the art movement Fluxus in the mid-’60s, transformed a district slated for demolition into an artists’ studio/residential neighborhood so popular it is now being ruined by its own success. It also established a model for inner-city urban renewal that has been attempted in downtowns across the country.

In Central Los Angeles, the 1989 remodel of the landmark Dunbar Hotel, a focal point of Central Avenue in its jazz heyday, was the genesis for the recent reemergence of Central Avenue. This difficult project was achieved because it had the whole-hearted backing of the City Council, the mayor’s office and the local population.

For, ultimately, it is not architecture itself that makes a difference. A community must embrace a new building if it is to have a positive effect.

If officialdom and the public has faith in the church and believes in the architect chosen to create a new one, and invests in its infrastructure and surroundings, the new building could become a proud focal point of a thriving community that once was.*