A Well-Deserved Face Lift

Before Hollywood was Hollywood, there was Broadway. Downtown Los Angeles’ most important street was lined with vaudeville and motion picture palaces in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s. The Million Dollar Theatre stood at 3rd Street and Broadway, and the Los Angeles Theatre was at the intersection with 6th.

Broadway was also the city’s retail hub. The city’s first department store was built on the boulevard and named, of course, the Broadway. Later came the City of Paris and Hamburger’s People’s store, both of which helped make Broadway the place to stroll in L.A.

The hows and whys of its decline were amply covered in Sunday’s Opinion section by Joel Kotkin, a Pepperdine University sociologist. By day, Broadway is probably as busy as it ever was, having become one of L.A.’s busiest Latino shopping districts. But by night, it’s the main street of a ghost town.

One of the most obvious symbols of the decline of Broadway and downtown decay is right there under our feet, and tires--the car-rattling road surface. These days, Broadway looks more like a badly organized archeological dig than a thoroughfare, with potholes so prevalent and deep that they have exposed decades-old trolley rails and bits of granite curbs from the turn of the century.

In the past two years, Mayor Richard Riordan and the City Council have been able to earmark more funds for street repairs, about 150 to 200 miles of resurfacing a year. But that’s not enough to keep up in a city with 6,500 miles of streets and 800 miles of alleys.

So there should be a cheer for the happy news that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will pay the majority cost for a rebuilt Broadway, replete with palm-lined sidewalks and historical lampposts. That led one Broadway merchant to drolly remark: “Leave it to the MTA to come up with a way to make driving your car more pleasurable.”

In fact, the massive overhaul could pave the way, literally, to far more improvements, which could restore some of Broadway’s former luster. Getting there may be a rough road, but one worth taking.