Defending Broadway Business District

One minor clarification in “Hot Revitalization Trend Has Some Merchants Bothered” [Enterprise Zone, Jan. 20]: The downtown Broadway business improvement district, Los Angeles’ first, was not part of Mayor Richard Riordan’s, or anyone else’s, economic development strategy.

It was established in 1994 after three years of exhaustive work by a handful of visionaries, much of it spent introducing the concept to city officials and staff. As its executive director, I can assure you that no one at L.A. City Hall had BIDs on their radar screen until Miracle on Broadway proposed it.

Los Angeles was completely out of touch with what was happening throughout the country. Despite BID success stories in nearly all major U.S. downtowns, our proposal was considered radical by some and viewed with nervous, cautious distance by most.

For Broadway, the experience was all too short-lived. But during its brief existence, garbage was not flowing over trash cans and onto sidewalks, calls for service to police by merchants dropped by 30%, and the Latino families shopping there felt that they too enjoyed a clean and safe “promenade.”

I would proudly match that record against anyone rising to criticize such efforts and failing to offer a solution of his or her own. Trashing good ideas doesn’t get the trash picked up.

ESTELA LOPEZ

Los Angeles