Club Pans, Praises Progress in L.A.
The best and worst of downtown Los Angeles came in for praise and ridicule last week as the Downtown Breakfast Club presented its 21st annual Roses and Lemons Awards to those who have, in the club’s view, enhanced or slowed social and economic progress downtown.
The real estate group bestowed a Rose on the Old Bank District near 4th and Main streets for “infusing a downtrodden part of downtown with new vitality and helping to remedy the city’s serious shortage of housing” through the conversion of three office buildings to 235 loft apartments.
The Breakfast Club lobbed a Lemon at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation for “confusing downtown circulation,” saying the city needs to improve routing of one-way streets and provide more signs to let people know where they are and where they’re going. The city’s Department of Building and Safety, however, drew an accolade (but not a Rose) from developer Tom Gilmore for streamlining the building code.
Other Roses went to L.A.’s Best, an after-school program aimed at reducing the dropout rate, drug use and gang activity; and the Accelerated Charter School in South Central Los Angeles for making something useful out of an abandoned garment company headquarters.
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