The Downtown Blues

Maybe it was the full moon. Maybe it was the deep, warm tones of the alto sax. Maybe it was just because I wasn’t in L.A. But I think I’ve fallen in love with San Diego.

Not all of San Diego, just the Gaslamp Quarter, that chunk of downtown territory rooted in a history that trails back to the Civil War. Restored to a Victorian mix of shops, clubs and restaurants, it beckons alluringly to guys like me who yearn for busy nights and mellow places.

Boosters have described the 131-year-old district as a combination of Bourbon Street, Soho and Fisherman’s Wharf. Maybe so. Its 16 city blocks do evoke that dreamy, almost mythical era before street gangs, cell phones and dot-coms.

It wasn’t always that way. Pete Wilson was mayor when he got tired of San Diego’s seedy, sailor-oriented downtown and initiated the effort that resulted in what’s there today.

I went slouching south, lured by a mountain of letters that said I’d dismissed San Diego too easily in a column last month. I stayed in the remodeled, 90-year-old U.S. Grant Hotel, roamed the streets and ended up seduced by moonlight and jazz.

And I found myself wondering during the euphoria of a two-day hiatus from calamity, why not all this in L.A.?

*

I asked that of Carol Schatz, president of our Central City Assn., a tough, lucid lady, who says it’s coming. Not just to one street but to a lot of streets in downtown L.A. Shops and restaurants and moonlight, and all that jazz.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that song before. We’ve gotten high-rises and a lot of nice places in the past 20 years, but no, well, strolling street. No Gaslamp Quarter.

Our history is centered around Olvera Street’s ethnic clutter. It’s great if you’re buying a sombrero or having your picture taken on a burro, but that’s about it.

A new downtown is in the works, says Schatz. “I’ve had this goal for 10 years to create a 24-hour center, and it’s beginning to happen now.”

She points to Staples Center as the catalyst and says it has already lured in new restaurants, converting at least that section of town from a 9-to-5 place into a 9-to-11 place. We forge ahead six hours at a time.

There’s the new cathedral too, the Taj Mahony, but that’s not likely to lure a lot of night-lifers. The Disney Concert Hall, with its planned shops and restaurants, might.

Both dream-spinner and blueprint realist, Schatz talks about turning ideas into the kinds of projects that will transform what has been the Realm of the Chicken Boy into a carefree place of fun and bright lights, as in the old Petula Clark song.

And it’ll happen, she says, within the next five years.

*

One does see signs. The Southern California Institute of Architecture, whose graduates are helping shape the look of the future, will be moving in. It will occupy a restored, century-old railroad freight building in the artist’s loft district of downtown.

Other signs: The prestigious, Pasadena-based Art Center College of Design is considering a proposal to move its entire campus to Bunker Hill.

And developer Tom Gilmore, who, at 6-3, towers over downtown in more ways than one, will turn three historic, skid row buildings into 250 apartments. Other investors will reshape an old office building at 6th and Flower into the first major central city hotel in a decade. What’s old is new again.

All of this doesn’t guarantee the kind of strolling street I was talking about, but it does promise life to an area that pretty much dies at sunset. Almost 400,000 people who work downtown every day head home at night without looking back.

Habits have to be broken and trust restored in the moonlight hours. San Diego did it. Santa Monica did it at the Third Street Promenade. Pasadena did it at Old Town. We’ve got to convince the diners and drinkers and music lovers that it’s safe to come downtown. It’s OK to be mellow again.

There’s a lot of moving and shaking going on in L.A. There’s a lot of dream-spinning. Born and raised here, Carol Schatz has a vision that mixes moonlight and mist with hammers and saws. “I’m a passionate believer in a downtown that really flies,” she says. “We won’t be a real city until it does.”

In the meantime, I’ll just saunter down to San Diego once in a while, catch some moonlight and jazz and wait for our own dream to come true.

It’s only taken about two centuries to come this far. What’s a few more years?

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com.