An Icon Without Social Value

Staples Center doesn’t have a shiny monorail shuttling visitors to a perch high above the grit and grind of the city like the Getty Center in Brentwood. But it does have a class-conscious escalator to ensure that no plebeian wanders onto its luxury levels. VIP sports fans in L.A.’s new state-of-the-art venue not only sit apart from the crowd, they also walk though separate entrances and down separate hallways. Escalators and elevators that ferry guests from the street to the upper level do not stop at exclusive floors in between. Occupants of the arena’s premier seats and 160 luxury suites aren’t obliged to mingle with the proverbial unwashed, assuming working people can afford the arena’s sky-high ticket prices.

Staples Center has been heralded as a new icon for Los Angeles--and it is. At night, its glowing blue halo brings distinction to the downtown skyline. But the sharp class barriers built into its design also make it an inappropriate symbol for a rejuvenated city center. Sure, it’s great that crowds of people now walk Figueroa Street after dark, but downtown cannot truly be a “center” if it is not a place where Angelenos from the east, west, south and north come together.

The new economies of professional sports are certainly not unique to Los Angeles. This year caps a decade-long boom in sports construction around the country. As pro basketball teams’ average payrolls have more than doubled in the 1990s, owners have sought new ways to generate revenue. This year alone, glitzy new arenas catering primarily to a corporate clientele have been inaugurated in Atlanta, Denver, Indianapolis and Miami. They all offer better seats, better food and better service. Ticket prices have correspondingly skyrocketed by 108% over the past eight years.

But this being the entertainment capital of the world, it’s no surprise that $375-million Staples Center is the most opulent new arena in the country. One of its anchor tenants, the Los Angeles Lakers, boasts the second-highest ticket prices in professional basketball, now the costliest of the four major sports. According to Team Marketing Report, a family of four can expect to spend an average of $427.57 to see Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant in action. The National Basketball Assn.’s requirement that each team make available 500 tickets a game for $10 or less does little to make Laker tickets accessible to a wider audience. While deserting working-class fans, it’s a wonder that Staples Center’s owners didn’t also choose to build their sports palace in Brentwood.

Despite its pretense of “community outreach” and its conspicuous bilingual signs, the Getty Center, L.A.’s other new elitist enclave, can legitimately claim artistic license to be exclusive. It wasn’t surprising that the Getty Trust chose not to build its new museum downtown, where more Angelenos would have access to its collections. After all, fine arts is typically the domain of the upper crust.

Sports, on the other hand, have always been a largely working-class preoccupation. For much of this century, spectator sports have been a common denominator in a diverse America. They have played an integrating role, bringing Americans together in common cause and places. Many ethnic athletes have used sports as a way out of poverty and into the American mainstream. Baseball, in particular, has been the epitome of the melting pot. Honus Wagner and Lou Gehrig once brought proud German Americans into the ballpark. Detroit Tiger Hank Greenberg was a hero in the Jewish neighborhoods of the Bronx. Baseball gave America its first truly national hero from non-Northern European stock: Joe DiMaggio. And, of course, Jackie Robinson’s entrance into the major leagues presaged the end of official racial segregation.

One could also trace waves of immigration and ethnic succession on basketball rosters and in the names of boxing champions. No other field of endeavor can match sports in its ability to boost group pride. There were the great Irish and German fighters at the turn of the century. It’s forgotten that not only was “the sweet science” once a heavily Jewish sport, but Jews dominated professional basketball in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s. Then came the era of the Italian, Latino and African American boxer. Blacks are only the most recent American ethnic group to dominate sports.

Before the advent of the luxury arena, sports’ broad-based appeal made stadiums unparalleled gathering places in U.S. cities. For example, old Chicago Stadium was one of the few places in that city where people of different ethnic and class backgrounds could mingle under one roof. But the palace that Michael Jordan built--United Center, which opened in 1994--is now almost as expensive to enter as Staples Center, and the crowds are larger yet more homogeneous. While the Staples crowds are still ethnically diverse, their class makeup is decidedly narrower.

One of the ways sports franchises have been able to persuade cities to help finance their arenas is to boast of their ability to galvanize whole communities behind them and bolster civic morale. The Lakers’ five NBA championships in the 1980s infused L.A. with a sense of shared community and a desire to pull together that otherwise is felt only in the immediate aftermath of riots and earthquakes. But because such experiences are infrequent, luxury arenas like Staples Center have abandoned their role as democracy’s gathering places and, along with it, much of their social value.

Urban critics have pointed out that Angelenos have never shown great interest in public places, anyway, that they prefer backyard barbecues to the bustle of large crowds. After five years without a professional football team, there still is no great public outcry to bring a franchise to Los Angeles. On average, Angelenos spend considerably less time in public places than their counterparts in New York or Chicago.

Yet, the successes of Pasadena’s Old Town and Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade may reveal a budding desire to rub shoulders. Although the city will never be one of great public squares, boosters and builders of L.A.’s new civic icons should think about adding public spaces that encourage diverse, vibrant and cosmopolitan environments. With secessionist movements threatening to tear the city and the school district up, L.A.’s definition of “community” is getting ever more narrow and self-serving. Meantime, there are fewer and fewer institutions and voices that remind us that community in Los Angeles means more than just the people who look like us or live within our immediate surroundings.

For now, Staples Center’s ultimate iconic value lies in the virtual realm. Presumably, because fewer people will be able to afford the arena’s steep ticket prices, more will choose to watch its games at home, where Angelenos still prefer to spend much of their spare time. Along with TV viewers across the country, they’ll marvel at wide shots of the arena against a backdrop of the downtown skyline. The only difference is that Angeleno sports fans will be able to point at the screen, comment on the beauty of their hometown landmark and feel a sudden surge of civic pride.

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This story has been edited to reflect a correction to the original published text. Hank Greenberg played for the Detroit Tigers, not the New York Giants.

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