City Center Revival

Downtown Los Angeles may not be on the verge of the resurrection its cheerleaders ardently wish for, but neither is the city’s historic core the lost cause many still believe.

For decades, city planners have been bent on re-creating a “24-hour downtown”--where swank restaurants, theater and sports events draw folks after the government offices and law firms have closed up for the night. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened yet. Downtown still mostly clears out after 5:00 p.m., with commuters racing for the freeways like NASCAR drivers once the starting flag drops.

The renaissance of other Southern California city centers--notably San Diego’s spruced up Gaslamp Quarter and Old Pasadena--have left some folks here with a bad case of downtown-envy. But metropolitan Los Angeles long ago became a region where nighttime street life happened in many places, rather than just one. The big draws of mini-centers like the Santa Monica Promenade, Century City, Universal CityWalk and Beverly Hills mean that downtown, to thrive, will have to re-invent itself as something other than the hub of commerce and culture it once was.

That’s already happening. The Staples Center has brought in a full program of sports and concerts since opening in October 1999, and earlier this week its builders announced plans to build a hotel adjacent to the arena and convention center along with theaters, office and retail space and other amenities. Fiesta Broadway, the city’s gigantic Cinco de Mayo celebration, packed downtown last Sunday for the 11th consecutive year. After years of delay, the Walt Disney Concert Hall is slowly rising across from the Music Center, and plans are in the works to turn the earthquake-damaged St. Vibiana’s Cathedral into a unique performance venue, complete with restaurants and a small hotel. Later this month, the Los Angeles Conservancy will present its 14th annual “Last Remaining Seats” series, screening classic films in three historic theaters on Broadway. In past years, the series has drawn 10,000 people downtown.

These, then, are some of the bright spots on the map of downtown. Yet these islands of life are still isolated amid a lot of street grime and shuttered buildings. Three bills now before the Legislature, each authored by Assembly member Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), could help fill in some of those empty spaces. AB 1901, AB 1992 and AB 2255 are aimed at encouraging developers to breathe new life into some of the older, gloomier buildings downtown by providing tax relief and other incentives for their renovation, what’s called adaptive re-use of these dowagers for retail, affordable housing, high-tech businesses and more. Several such projects are in the planning stage, and developers say the incentives in Cedillo’s bills could make the difference between red ink and black, particularly in buildings that require extensive earthquake retrofitting.

A new life for downtown Los Angeles is emerging, albeit slowly, but our downtown will be different than San Francisco, Boston or Chicago. It will never again be this city’s one and only center, but it doesn’t have to be for a downtown revival to take hold.

Now, if the city would just finish the endless street work downtown.