Staples Project: Big Goal, Big Risk

A lesser billionaire than Rupert Murdoch or Phil Anschutz might have thought twice about comparing a proposed entertainment district in downtown Los Angeles to New York’s Times Square.

It is a bit brash, after all, to put a 4-million-square-foot project built around one large hotel and theater in the same league as the granddaddy of all American entertainment meccas, with its 40 live theaters, 12,500 hotel rooms, 250 restaurants and 21 million square feet of office space alone.

But Anschutz, the Denver-based entertainment and telecommunications mogul, and Murdoch, the international media baron, are nothing if not brash.

So although few people are likely to believe that their proposed entertainment district can ever rival, or even resemble, Times Square, civic leaders and urban planning specialists are taking the plans very seriously, convinced that the project could be a major force in reshaping downtown Los Angeles.

“These are serious, real people,” fellow billionaire Eli Broad observed. “These are not dreamers.”

The City Council approved plans Wednesday for the 27-acre development around Staples Center, but still must decide whether to help finance its centerpiece, a 45-story hotel that officials hope would breathe new life into the struggling Los Angeles Convention Center.

Public financing for the hotel is the biggest of several big ifs surrounding the $1-billion project, most of which will be built on land now used for parking lots.

The project will work, urban planners say, if the developers can find the political support for a city subsidy, if architects can translate their vision for a lively, pedestrian-friendly district into reality, if the Staples entertainment zone can be connected to the rest of downtown, and if downtown continues to develop as a residential center.

Given all those variables, the vision that planners paint can be inspiring--or dispiriting.

In the best scenario, the new sports and nightclub district provides a vibrant southern anchor to downtown, complementing a northern high-culture anchor centered on Disney Hall, the rest of the Music Center and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Together, they act as a catalyst for development throughout downtown.

In between are newly invigorated urban boulevards--Figueroa Street, Broadway and Grand Avenue--each with a distinctive flavor. A new transit system, perhaps a small-scale revival of the old “Red Car” trolley line, ties it all together, reaching as far south as Exposition Park and USC and as far north as the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

“In some ways, this is a no-brainer in terms of city planning,” said Michael Dear, director of USC’s Southern California Studies Center.

But it could all go wrong, Dear and others warn, if the Staples area plan is handled badly. In the worst-case scenario, it could become a garish, stand-alone surrogate for a suburban mall. In this vision, the area provides a place for conventioneers to spend a few idle hours in familiar chain restaurants and stores, but offers little beyond Staples Center and the new theater to attract local residents--and nothing in the way of connective tissue to tie it to the city as a whole.

The developers insist that will not be the case.

Ted Tanner, an architect who is a senior vice president with the Anschutz Entertainment Group, speaks passionately of a multifaceted area where Staples Center and the 7,000-seat L.A. Live theater are surrounded by hotels, apartments and shops, “great restaurants, ethnic restaurants, coffee shops, bistros.” Large retailers such as Barnes & Noble or Tower Records would be encouraged to build flagship stores in the district, but developers would also woo smaller, local businesses.

The theater would host awards shows--Tanner named the Emmys and the Latin Grammys as examples, although he said the developers had no commitments yet--and would compete with such venues as the Universal Amphitheatre for concerts. Between the theater and Staples Center would be a one-acre plaza that could become a civic focal point, a place for celebrations and outdoor concerts or plays.

That perceived role as an urban village green, along with plans for bright lights and signs, is where the developers come up with their Times Square comparison. Their model is the newly renovated, sanitized Times Square achieved by redevelopment over the past decade, one that critics complain has been homogenized and Disneyfied into theme-park blandness.

Maybe Times Square isn’t the best example of what the developers envision, however. Many cities have created successful entertainment districts in recent decades; they include Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Denver’s Lower Downtown, New York’s South Street Seaport, San Antonio’s River Walk, Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, Old Pasadena, San Diego’s Horton Plaza and Irvine’s Spectrum.

Reviving Cities’ Historic Districts

With the exception of the last two, these all share a common trait: Each is located in a historic district and takes advantage of its locale to create a strong sense of identity and architectural integrity.

Dana Crawford, the founder of Denver’s Larimer Square and chairman of Urban Neighborhoods Inc., which specializes in redeveloping historic areas, said such districts need something that sets them apart from suburban malls and theme parks.

“I guess my philosophy is to reuse your assets that represent the history of your community,” she said. She wondered why Los Angeles isn’t doing that.

“Downtown L.A. has so many very fine buildings,” she said. “It’s just fantastic what could be done with the old buildings instead of building new stuff.”

Crawford acknowledged, with distaste bordering on contempt, that there are examples of successful entertainment districts built from scratch. “Well, Disney,” she said. “Las Vegas.”

Nothing wrong with that, some people might say.

Michael Bayard, who studies entertainment districts for the Urban Land Institute in Washington, said there is no reason a successful district can’t be built from the ground up. “It comes down to details,” he said. “How it’s actually done.”

Bayard sees a brave new world of urban centers that sound not unlike Universal CityWalk.

“Retail and entertainment are becoming inseparable,” he said. “So that what you are starting to see is that almost all forms of retail development are being designed in a more entertaining way. I think eventually the two will merge entirely, and we won’t speak of entertainment development as a separate category.”

Dear, the urban planner from USC, sounded a vaguely similar theme when he called for the developers of the Staples district to give it the panache and pedestrian friendliness of, well, CityWalk.

“If you want to put it crudely,” he said, “I’m even willing to suggest turning this into a new theme park in downtown L.A., where we sort of celebrate the urban, celebrate the conviviality of coming together in this place.”

All of this academic talk is nothing more than that if the developers don’t find someone to build the centerpiece hotel. The Anschutz group insists that it will not construct the hotel; rather, it would find a qualified hotel developer to do that. But nearly everyone concerned with the project agrees that the developer would demand some form of city subsidy (although developers generally refuse to use that word).

The City Council has agreed to look at the need for a subsidy and what form it could take. One possibility discussed so far is an increase in the city’s hotel room tax, with the added proceeds going to the new 1,200-room hotel.

Convention Center’s Future Tied to Hotel

City leaders badly want the hotel, which is seen as the only way of saving the Convention Center. Despite landing the 2000 Democratic National Convention, the center has generally been unable to attract major conventions, and is constantly losing ground to more dynamic facilities in Las Vegas, San Diego and Orange County.

Nationally, big convention hotel projects have increasingly relied on city subsidies. Those who support that concept say such large hotels, with their vast banquet halls and meeting rooms, are extremely difficult to run profitably.

“The people who make money on new hotels are the people who buy them out of bankruptcy,” said commercial real estate developer Steve Soboroff, the unsuccessful mayoral candidate who was an economic advisor to former Mayor Richard Riordan.

The real subsidy, Soboroff added, is the money the city pours into the Convention Center because the facility isn’t successful enough to support itself.

In the end, the entire project may live or die on the reputations of its two chief backers, Anschutz and Murdoch. On the one hand, they have the money and clout to get the thing built. On the other hand, who wants to give tax money to a project backed by two of the world’s richest men?

Bayard of the Urban Land Institute burst out laughing when he heard who was behind the project.

“That’s a couple of heavy hitters,” he said. “Deep pockets. Very deep pockets.”

The question for the city may be: How deep will they dig?