Destination Downtown

Phase One of your introduction to the new downtown occurs on a sunny weekday morning when you stand 27 floors above the largely cement heart of Los Angeles, running your fingers over polished bronze and gazing down upon courthouses and office towers and old buildings full of new lofts. The city lies naked at your feet and, clearly, it’s had some work done.

That includes the spot where you stand--atop City Hall’s tower, which has been closed to the public for years. After more than $300 million in seismic and cosmetic improvements that took up much of the last decade, public tours of the 1928 landmark resumed in December. Once again, mere mortals can tread in the footsteps of Joe Friday, Clark Kent and Sam Yorty.

Now forget those guys, forget the view and step along to Phase Two. This comes on a Friday night, just a few blocks from City Hall and a few yards from a gaggle of rowdy guys at the entrance to the Jalisco Inn on South Main Street. It’s late, it’s dark, it’s disquieting. You ease your car into the lonely parking lot and a homeless guy steps up to your window. You roll it down 3 inches.

“The smell?” he says.

“The smell,” you affirm.

So you park and give him a few bucks to keep an eye on your car, and he points you toward an alley and the dumpster-adjacent door. Inside, the interior design appears to have been done by squatters, and somebody is rhythmically smashing a bucket. Yet your sense of menace eases. Sketches are tacked to rough walls, arty people in their 20s, 30s and 40s are milling around chatting, and a stenciled sign announces what the homeless man has already told you: This is the Smell, an all-ages den of art and alternative music on South Main Street.

There. At a cumulative cost of $5, you’ve glimpsed, from high and low, two visions of what’s new and renewed in Los Angeles’ evolving urban core.

To hear the soundtrack of the changing downtown--it’s a dissonant piece of music, but spirited--you need only eavesdrop on one of the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Saturday morning walking tours. “It’s just the start of a whole new era,” says tour guide Steve Gollis of Hollywood, beaming as he looks across Grand Avenue at the half-assembled Walt Disney Concert Hall. But the streets are still quiet on the weekends, once the office crews have gone home. Some visitors call it serene. But New Yorker James Montalbano, surveying the scene at 4th Street and Grand Avenue, marvels, “There’s nobody on the street. It’s just so unnerving.”

Those who have found new reasons to go downtown are dispersed at the smattering of new places, all opened, reopened or expanded in the last year: an architectural bookstore on Traction Avenue, a teen techno-dance club in an old Broadway movie house and an Italian restaurant where even the floorboards are imported.

If you’re an optimist, these mostly modest new attractions may persuade you that downtown’s long-promised brighter future is arriving at last.

If you’re one of the millions who make a point of staying away from the city core, well, think of this as the tale of a distant, exotic land where someday you may be called to jury duty.

The New Behemoths

The marquee attractions in the new downtown, of course, are the two behemoths-in-progress on Bunker Hill: the gleaming Disney Hall (to be completed by late 2003, budgeted at $274 million) and the dirt-clod-colored Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (to be finished this fall; budgeted at $163 million). Already, they’re worth a quick look--if only so you can someday say you’ve seen the skeleton beneath Disney Hall’s strange metal skin.

The public can’t get inside either site, but to take measure of them on your own, you need only take a walk on Grand Avenue, beginning at 3rd Street and heading north. On your left, there’s still time to see the frame and innards of Disney Hall.

Barbara Guarnieri, a New Yorker taking in that very view after the Los Angeles Conservancy’s monthly “Downtown’s Evolving Skyline” walking tour, says she can’t help but think of the World Trade Center. “In New York, we’re watching something be dismantled. And you’re watching something go up.” As the group continues north past the Music Center, Peter Panec, an architecture buff from Santa Monica, catches site of the stark new cathedral. “Look!” he says. “A new factory building downtown!”

Whatever you think of the severe geometry of the exterior, you can guess from the size and height of the windows that filtered light will be a big part of the interior atmosphere.

Because the cathedral building is part of an enclosed complex that’s still a construction site at Temple Street and Grand Avenue, you can’t get any closer than the sidewalk. The concert hall and cathedral make only cameo appearances in the Conservancy’s skyline tour, which puts the buildings in the context of the other growth on Bunker Hill and points out some coming changes: the 1955 Superior Oil building at 550 S. Flower St., which is to reopen in coming months as a Standard Hotel, part of the trendy chain that includes the Standard on the Sunset Strip.

Conservancy tours run on the third Saturday of each month; reservations required. Groups meet at 10 a.m. in the lobby of the Millennium Biltmore Hotel and the cost is $8 to $10 for nonmembers. (Information and reservations: [213] 623-CITY; www.laconservancy.org.)

The High Point

From the cathedral site at Grand and Temple, it’s a four-block downhill walk to Main Street and the most familiar building in downtown Los Angeles. That’s City Hall, known to “Dragnet” fans as police headquarters, to “Superman” adherents as the offices of the Daily Planet. Now that it’s been through rehab, its handlers say it is again ready for close-ups--in this case, free tours.

City officials have been working in the upgraded City Hall since last summer. A grand reopening ceremony was scrubbed after Sept. 11, but free 45-minute tours resumed in December. They run on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., led by volunteers from the mayor’s office on the building’s third floor. Reservations are recommended ([213] 978-1995), especially for groups of 10 or more. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, you might see the City Council in session. Most council meetings are open to the public; more information on scheduling is available at the city Web site, www. lacity.org/council.htm.

Look closely above the elevator doors on the third floor, near the starting point, and you see Greco-Roman figures operating movie cameras. The tour takes you past revived meeting rooms, where restoration crews, directed by principal architect Brenda Levin, removed decades of paint-overs, pulled cork panels from walls, rescued and polished old fittings.

The halls and rooms are full of Italian marble, gleaming bronze, Malibu tiles and ornately painted ceilings. As painstaking as this work seems, Kevin Jew, chief operating officer for the city’s Project Restore organization, notes that historic restoration visible to visitors cost about $8 million. Essentially invisible is the seismic upgrade that began in the early 1990s, which includes 526 shock-absorbing base isolators below the building, 8,000 tons of added structural or reinforcing steel and a $299-million price tag.

For many visitors, the highlight is the building’s rotunda, which features 60-foot ceilings and a 2,000-pound bronze chandelier that had been packed away in crates for decades. For others, the high point is, well, the high point: the 27th-floor observation deck, about 460 feet above the street.

It offers far views in every direction and just above it perches the Lindbergh Beacon, the 2,500-watt light that city officials turned on this winter for the first time in decades. (Jew said the beacon is lighted for only special occasions, in part because each lighting requires advance Federal Aviation Administration clearance.)

So far there are no weekend tours, but the Los Angeles Conservancy and city officials have tentative plans for two Saturday morning tours per month, led by conservancy guides, beginning in June. A rededication of the building has now been set for April 26, the anniversary of its original dedication in 1928.

A Brilliant Old Building, a Modest New Museum

From City Hall, it’s one block west on 1st Street, then two blocks south on Broadway to the Bradbury building (304 S. Broadway). For years, the Bradbury, built in 1893, has been a wonder to walk through, from the skylight atrium design to its elaborate ironwork, but until now, unless you had business with the LAPD Internal Affairs department, there wasn’t much reason to stop inside. That changed on Jan. 24, when the fledgling Architecture and Design Museum (A+D Museum for short) opened in 2,000 square feet on the ground floor.

Operating in space donated by building owner Ira Yellin, the museum is a relatively modest affair: orange and white walls, rough concrete and tile floors, usually no staff. Yet its first exhibition, on display through March 21, offers an enlightening peek into the story behind that new cathedral up the hill.

Before Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo landed the commission in 1996, he and four competitors were asked to jump through several hoops, including the design of a hypothetical shrine to Junipero Serra. The exhibition shows several models and descriptions of the competitors’ ideas (including a striking proposal from Frank Gehry that will remind some viewers of a half-finished game of Pic-Up Stix) and offers a hint at the thinking that won Moneo the job. The key to bringing awe and transcendence to a design, Moneo suggests in the text accompanying his entry, is the play of the light.

The A+D Museum (304 S. Broadway, portico space) is open Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is free. (213) 620-9961; www.aplusd.org.

Bohemians by the Tracks

Traction Avenue, an industrial district east of Alameda Street where the roads intersect at wacky angles, has been getting artier for several years now. The Cornerstone Theater is there, along with lofts and artists’ studios, the southern-flavored Soul Folks restaurant (714 Traction Ave.) and, just around the corner on 3rd Avenue, the bright, airy Cafe Metropol. But the last 12 months have brought several big steps.

The biggest came in September when the Southern California Institute of Architecture (350 Merrick St.; [213] 613-2200; www.sciarc.edu) ended a year of tent-and-trailer operations and moved into the converted 1907 Santa Fe freight depot along the tracks. The building stretches more than 1,200 feet along the tracks, and various student projects and other exhibits are displayed inside.

There are no formal tours, but admissions director Debra Abel said members of the public have been turning up often to look at the building. If visitors arrive between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays and ask nicely, “we pretty much give them a map of the building and tell them it’s a self-guided tour,” Abel said.

Half a block away on Traction, behind a beckoning glass storefront, stands Form Zero (811 Traction Ave.; [213] 620-1920), a bookstore specializing in architecture and design. Aiming to follow Sci-Arc, and no doubt to whittle a few dollars from the rent it was paying in its old Santa Monica location, the shop moved downtown in June.

For breakfast, lunch or a cup of coffee nearby, there’s Cafe Metropol (923 E. 3rd Ave.; [213] 613-1537), which helped pioneer the neighborhood and then doubled its size in November. For smaller snacks and caffeine, there’s Gourmet Coffee Warehouse ([213] 626-8650), which opened in early February, sharing a building with Form Zero.

In the same neighborhood, at 962B E. 4th St., the Project ([213] 620-0692; open Wednesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; www.elproyecto.com) gallery opened in May. Acting as a satellite to the Project on West 126th Street in New York, the Los Angeles gallery fills its 3,800 square feet (a former auto shop) with video art, along with paintings and sculpture from local and international artists.

The Project’s assistant director, Song Huff, 26, moved from New York to help open the space last year. With its history of neglect and recently rising rents and population, Huff said, her new neighborhood “reminds me of Brooklyn.”

Loft Life

Much of the optimism over downtown’s prospects has to do with the simple idea that more people want to live there these days. The Downtown Center Business Improvement District, which covers the 65-block core area of downtown, counted 12,633 housing units downtown in late 2001, including 880 loft units. The group forecasts that by 2004, if current proposals hold, that number will rise by a bit less than 50%, to 18,456.

If you don’t mind a sales pitch from developer Gilmore Associates, you can join a Saturday morning tour of units in three of that company’s rental loft buildings (the Hellman, Continental and San Fernando), which stand in the Old Bank District along Spring and Main streets at 4th Street.

Groups meet at 10 a.m., usually at the Acapulco Gold coffee shop (400 S. Main St.; another business that’s opened in the last year). Tours last two hours; sensible shoes are suggested ([213] 253-4777, www.laloft.com).

As you head south on Spring Street from 4th, you come across two other new enterprises: L.A. Cafe (639 S. Spring St.) , a coffee and sandwich shop with shaded tables out front that opened in January near the edge of the Fashion District; and Gallery 835 (835 S. Spring St.; [213] 629-2401; www.artmovesme. com), where owner Richard McDowell opened a 3,500-square-foot exhibition space in May.

Eats on Fig

Steakhouse Arnie Morton’s of Chicago (735 S. Figueroa St.; [213] 553-4566; www.mortons.com) opened in November in the mall at 7th and Figueroa streets, giving the chain its second Los Angeles County location (the other is in Beverly Hills) and giving hard-core carnivores an alternative to Nick & Stef’s Steakhouse, the Joaquin Splichal eatery that opened in 1999 at 330 S. Hope St.

But here comes Splichal again, with yet another downtown eatery: the elaborately appointed Zucca (801 S. Figueroa St; [213] 614-7800; www.patinagroup.com), which opened last week at 8th and Figueroa streets, just a block from Arnie Morton’s. Splichal’s first Italian restaurant, Zucca features a big patio, big, bold art on the walls, lots of deep colors and many imported objects.

“All this is from Italy,” said a hostess, offering a quick tour during lunch hour last week. “These tiles. And this wooden door is from an old church. And over here, these floorboards are from an Italian town.”

Neither restaurant, however, is staking its life on people going downtown just for fun. Putting business diners first, Arnie Morton’s serves lunch and dinner on weekdays, only dinner on weekends. Similarly, Zucca serves lunch and dinner on weekdays and dinner on Saturdays; it closes on Sundays. Meanwhile, in a move that cheers downtown’s boosters, McCormick & Schmick’s atop the Library Steps (633 W. 5th St.; [213] 629-1929) in October expanded its hours to include lunch on Saturdays and Sundays.

Nights on Broadway (and Near It)

Unless you head straight for Staples Center, the Music Center or an upscale restaurant, venturing downtown after dark probably means confronting some squalor, especially east of Broadway, where hundreds of people sleep on sidewalks every night. The buddy system is a good idea, as is knowing exactly where you’re headed.

The Smell (247 S. Main; www.thesmell.org; [213] 625-4325), two blocks east of Broadway, is closer still to several homeless encampments. It moved downtown in late 1999 and has settled into its rough-hewn space more thoroughly over the last year.

In the absence of alcohol or many other distractions, performers and audiences alike seem relatively serious about their music, which varies from jazzy to industrial. The club’s wall notices last week included a posting from a “hard-core animal rights peace punk band” seeking guitarist, bassist and drummer.

Around 11 one recent Friday night, the band was Felonius and the singer, a tall woman in blond hair and a red dress, was deadly earnest. “This song is about all those people that [work] you over, that have a little more power than you,” she began. Toward the stage, one gaggle of Smellsters listened and applauded politely. Back near the entrance, another gaggle munched on apple cobbler (on sale at the counter) and pawed through used records, which ranged from Sun Ra to John Tesh.

The Smell, usually open three or four nights a week, has added a monthly art show and a Wednesday night improvisational music series. It’s also open more often in summer, when students have more freedom to prowl. The cover is about $5, and doors open around 9 p.m.

For more mainstream pleasures, there is the gaudy old Orpheum Theater on Broadway near 8th Street, where Will Rogers once quipped and Sally Rand once stripped. The Orpheum reopened in June after a $3-million, 18-month renovation.

Built in 1926, the 2,100-seat Orpheum (842 S. Broadway; www.laorpheum.com) is one of 11 old theaters featured on the Los Angeles Conservancy’s “Broadway Theaters” tour every Saturday morning; it also presents live performances occasionally. On Saturday and Sunday, Middle Eastern pop musicians Khaled and Hakim take over the hall with their “Desert Roses and Arabian Rhythms” tour.

Meanwhile, the nearby unrenovated Palace Theater (630 S. Broadway; [213] 688-6166), purchased in 2000 by Gilmore Associates, has begun offering occasional live shows, often on the wild side. The first, in September, was a variety show that attracted a crowd of about 100, manager Dawn Garcia said. Other events have included a 24-hour horror film festival, and evenings of installation and performance art evenings are scheduled for April 5 and 6.

Between them stands the Globe theater, yet another enterprise with a new identity. Though the Globe sign remains out front at 744 S. Broadway, the big business happens in back, where an alley entrance advertises this as the Orion nightclub.

Open to clubbers age 18 and up, the club serves no alcohol, turning deejays and dancers loose on the bottom floor of the old theater.

On Friday nights the theme is techno music and dancers pay $20 at the door, then submit to a rigorous pat-down (pens and lip balm containers are among the forbidden items). Upon their full disarmament, clubbers gain entry and the chance to frolic until 5 a.m. amid the bouncing green laser lights and the outlines of the historic theater faintly visible above.

If you’re 19, you’re likely to feel right at home. If you’re 40, consider the couple about that age who turned up at Orion one recent Friday around midnight. As they waited in line to have their purses and pockets ransacked, another clubber, about 20 years old, approached with a question:

“Hey,” he said. “Are you looking for your kids?”

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Christopher Reynolds is a Times staff writer.