Merchants See Hope in Plans for Arena

From a window above the “Big and Tall” men’s clothing store he manages, George Kalebdjian scans the surrounding neighborhood near the Convention Center in downtown Los Angeles. He doesn’t much like the view.

Empty parking lots, boarded warehouses and a nocturnal dance hall line 12th Street between his well-maintained store and the futuristic Convention Center a block away.

But, in his mind’s eye, Kalebdjian envisions the same street differently--with a new high-rise hotel, nice restaurants and armies of happy shoppers. Such an unfulfilled vision attracted the Repp LTD. Big and Tall shop to Flower Street four years ago as the $500-million Convention Center expansion was being finished.

“We knew this would be a tomorrow store, not a today store,” said the clothier.

Tomorrow may be closer, he hopes, if a proposed 20,000-seat sports and entertainment arena is built at Figueroa and 11th streets, next to the Convention Center. The Los Angeles City Council is expected this week to start deliberating a nonbinding agreement with arena developers, who are also negotiating with Inglewood.

Economic benefits are keenly anticipated in the surrounding 70-block area in downtown Los Angeles called South Park, where a quarter of the land is vacant and the residential population remains just a third of the 15,000 called for in city plans.

But the extent that the arena can help revive South Park--and the rest of downtown--is being debated in government, academic and business circles. The discussions raise issues about investment environment, urban design, security, transportation, displacement and how to overcome the anti-downtown bias that many Southern Californians hold.

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The arena “could be anything from the savior to the final nail in the coffin,” said Richard Peiser, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate Development at USC’s School of Urban Planning and Development. “If it’s done right, it could be the catalyst for really turning the area around. But there are also dangers associated with it, if it turns out to be surrounded by a sea of parking lots.”

No doubt, the arena would attract some new investment to the Figueroa Street corridor, Peiser said. The test would be whether the other investment “makes a big splash instead of a small splash.”

Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Assn. of Los Angeles, is of the “big splash” school. She believes downtown Los Angeles will experience the same dramatic revivals in shopping and night life that new sports facilities spurred in troubled downtowns of Phoenix, Denver, Baltimore and other U.S. cities.

“The transformational impacts are clear. It is not just pie-in-the-sky hope,” she said.

The first hurdle is the competition with Inglewood, which wants a replacement for the Forum built next to the Inglewood home of the Kings’ hockey and Lakers’ basketball teams. Inglewood City Manager Paul D. Eckles has criticized the South Park location as “a fringe area.” South Park boosters predict the arena will attract a 1,200- to 1,800-room hotel and a large entertainment center, which in turn, could bring more meetings to the underused Convention Center and more street life to support new and existing eateries and shops. That could transform the no-man’s-land near the Convention Center and provide links along Figueroa to the more lively parts of downtown to the north.

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Office workers from Bunker Hill and the 7th Street district then may feel comfortable enough to leave their cars at work and walk to dinner, a game, and a decaf latte or beer afterward. Passengers from the nearby Blue and Red lines would add to the evening crowds, as would people who drive to the arena for the projected 299 games and shows each year, planners say. The demand for new, local apartments might rise as people discover new conveniences downtown, the theory goes.

Even fervent advocates of the arena concede that such a change would not be automatic or easy.

“It’s an uphill battle,” said Michael Pfeiffer, executive director of the South Park Stakeholders Group, an organization of property owners and institutions in the area bounded by the Harbor and Santa Monica freeways, 8th and Main streets.

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Downtown Los Angeles still will face strong competition from regional shopping and entertainment centers in Santa Monica, Pasadena, Glendale and Universal City, Pfeiffer said. “I think we can compete, but it’s going to take more than just the arena. It’s going to take the hotel and related entertainment facilities.”

Those attractions must offer something “absolutely” special, said Chan Wood, executive vice president and head of marketing for Pacific Theatres. “You are not going to drive from Long Beach, the San Fernando Valley, to go to a restaurant or store or movie you can find in your own backyard,” he said.

That special environment could have a sports theme, with sports bars and giant video games, or it could stress a more sophisticated aura of jazz clubs and microbreweries. A multiplex movie complex with an unusual number of screens is another possibility. That has not been decided yet.

Regardless of the theme or style, the area “could have great potential,” said William Hertz, a spokesman for the Mann cinema chain. “It’s not the prettiest in the world now, but those things can change. I think we are always interested in a good marketplace and this has potential of a good future.”

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Whatever gets built must not be a suburban-style “fortress,” the way the Forum in Inglewood was designed, said Michael Hricak, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects. To be successful, the new arena and adjacent developments must present a friendly, pedestrian-oriented environment with plenty of retail and restaurant activity open to the street, he said.

“It has to be more than just an in-and-out arena,” Hricak said.

And it must be perceived as safe, said Jeffrey Finkle, executive director of the National Council for Urban Economic Development, a Washington-based group that has studied downtown issues nationwide. While South Park businessmen and residents stress that the crime rate there is lower than in many other parts of Los Angeles, Finkle says statistics are not enough for an area seeking to reinvent itself. “If there isn’t a police presence to deal with the vagrants and other problems, and there aren’t sufficient people out on the streets to feel comfortable, you will blow that from the get go,” he said.

Bruce Blum now sees people walking at lunchtime from the Original Pantry Cafe, the Holiday Inn and the Figueroa Hotel to the Convention Center past his desk and lamp store at 10th and Figueroa streets. After dark is a different story. “You wouldn’t want to stay here at night. It’s not a great area,” he said. Blum welcomes the possible arena, even though his year-old “Desks, Etc., 4 Less” probably would be displaced by a hotel or parking lot.

A recent study commissioned by the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau projected that 710 permanent jobs would be created at the arena complex itself, plus 514 jobs indirectly dependent on arena activities. The authors at the EY Kenneth Leventhal Real Estate Group, however, concede that those figures may include many jobs already in existence at the Forum in Inglewood. And many jobs, like cotton candy vendors, may be near minimum wage.

Looking at other cities, some planning experts predict that the arena’s positive ripple effect would be felt mainly within about five adjacent blocks, particularly along Figueroa Street and eastward to Flower Street. The extent depends partly on the arena and entertainment complex.

“My guess is that the designers and owners of the arena will want to capture virtually every retail and restaurant opportunity within their own walls,” said J. Eugene Grigsby, director of the Advanced Policy Institute at UCLA. If too much is captured, other retail chances could be harmed, he suggested.

(City officials say they have commitments from the developers for street-level retail that would be accessible to people not attending arena events. And that is supposed to encourage other stores and restaurants outside the complex.)

“Any new business downtown is good for us,” said Linda Griego, managing general partner of the Engine Co. No. 28 restaurant on Figueroa. Weekday lunch business is usually good, but not dinner. When a convention is in town, the 130-seat dining room can have an hour wait for dinner. “Otherwise, we are lucky to have 100 customers. On a slow night, half,” said Griego, who is also president of Rebuild L.A.

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The current South Park landscape is one of strange contrasts.

The district--unrelated to a city park about 40 blocks to the south--includes such high profile institutions as the Transamerica tower, the California Hospital Medical Center and the Federal Reserve Bank. Subsidies over the past decade from the city Community Redevelopment Agency helped create a lovely neighborhood around the 2-year-old Grand Hope Park, fronting the Fashion Institute of Design and Manufacturing and three upscale condominium and rental apartment complexes. The Museum of Neon Art recently opened there.

Nearby are many empty lots where other development projects have stalled or collapsed as the downtown economy fizzled. “For lease” signs adorn many office buildings. All of South Park lacks a supermarket.

“That’s always been our problem, not having a critical mass of people in the area,” said Kelly Calderon, general manager of the 7-year-old Metropolitan apartments at Flower and Olympic Boulevard. More than 90% of the 270 apartments are rented, but much of the ground floor retail space is empty. So, if the arena is built, she said, “I can’t see anything but a positive impact.”

But at the Skyline condominium next door, Moe Cornfeld thinks the most dramatic effect would be traffic jams. A stockbroker who has lived at the Skyline for 10 years, he thinks the likelihood of the arena revitalizing South Park “is not that great”--about the same as his landing a “date with Madonna.”

A few blocks to the west, the neighborhood between the Harbor Freeway and Figueroa is home to mainly Latino immigrants who walk to jobs in the garment district. That area is troubled with abandoned houses, drug sales and prostitution. If the arena comes downtown, those five blocks are slated to be razed, for parking or a hotel.

Hopes are high that the arena will create decent jobs, said the Rev. Fay B. Lundin, associate pastor of the First United Methodist Church, located in a former office building at Olympic and Flower.

But Lundin is concerned that about 200 families may be displaced beyond walking distance to the sewing lofts or new arena jobs. “We hope the developer will be sensitive to the needs of the community,” Lundin said.

Meanwhile, at the Big & Tall shop, manager Kalebdjian strolls out on Flower Street and points toward the Convention Center and arena site. “We want something to happen,” he said. “After all, this is our lifeblood.”

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Parts of the South Park district of downtown Los Angeles may experience a resurgence if a new 20,000-seat sports and entertainment complex is constructed next to the Convention Center. Attention is focused on Figueroa Street as the site for a new hotel, shops and movie theaters. But experts disagree on how far economic benefits could spread in a neighborhood with both upscale housing and empty warehouses.