Grand Ave. plan not grand enough

I don’t recall how old I was, but my love affair with cities began the first time my parents drove me through the Caldecott tunnel from our home in Contra Costa County.

San Francisco rose up across the bay, dazzling and mysterious, and when we got into the city I was all the more enchanted. It seemed to me a place of magical scale and infinite possibility, and I envied the people who knew its secrets.

Since then, I’ve been unfaithful. It wasn’t San Francisco I loved so much as the idea of cities and the things that make them distinct. Was Paris an accident? Did Pasadena and Redlands just get lucky, or did someone fight to make them what they are?

Once, while researching what makes for a sense of place, I toured Charleston, S.C., on foot with its mayor. He was under pressure to approve a chain restaurant in the center of the historic district and said it would happen over his dead body, even though it would have been a catalyst for more commerce and tax revenues. A city is a precious gem, he told me, and his job was to guard it with his life and preserve history for the next generation.

In Los Angeles, that task is made all the more difficult by size and sprawl. Every neighborhood has its own history and charm, but what does one have to do with another, and what do any of them have to do with downtown? It was only at the city’s beginning that downtown was really a core for the metropolis. There have been anemic efforts over the years to re-create that sense of a center, but only recently has it had much momentum.

Now, certain movers and shakers, led by philanthropist Eli Broad, have declared that we need a civic gathering place for everyone, and our natural center is downtown.

I like the notion, and I like the changes over the last several years. It’s more diverse and more interesting, and I’d like to believe there’ll be even more salvaging of the turn-of-century buildings that make up the soul of old L.A.

We’ve got a ways to go, though. It’s not uncommon to see foreign tourists wandering the streets in the middle of downtown with a befuddled look that says they’re wondering where Los Angeles is. In other words, things haven’t quite come together yet. But we’re told that the next piece in the puzzle is the Grand Avenue project.

Speaking of which, my ears are still burning from Carol Schatz’s critique of my Wednesday column about Grand Avenue. I’d raised a few concerns about the planned $2-billion mega-development, for which the city and county have turned over public land worth a fortune to a private developer and also offered tax breaks and other subsidies that could total $100 million.

Schatz, head of the Central City Assn., told me she was so mad on Wednesday she had to wait until Thursday to call and say I was incredibly off-base in questioning the merits of the three-phase project, which will include a five-star hotel, two high-rise residential towers, and scads of office and retail space.

Among her several points was the argument that everyone in the city would benefit from the millions in taxes this project would generate, so the millions in subsidies would be paid back in spades. We had a cordial chat despite our differences, and I told Schatz she’d be pleased to hear that I was about to tour the site with another of my critics.

Madeline Janis, who voted to approve the project as a member of the Community Redevelopment Agency, wanted to tell me why, and we agreed to meet for a tour. As we walked down 1st Street from Disney Hall, she recounted how L.A. Councilwoman Jan Perry and L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina, among others, had insisted on concessions the developer -- Related Cos. -- initially resisted.

“We’re going to have 1,800 permanent jobs here,” Janis said when we got to the ugly erector set of a parking garage that will mercifully be leveled for the first phase of the project, “and thousands more temporary jobs during the construction.”

It was a major victory, she said, when Related Cos. agreed to a stipulation that every employer -- from the hotel to the restaurants and janitorial contractors -- would abide by the city’s living wage law (currently $10.64 an hour) for every employee.

Janis, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, said it was also a coup to negotiate a job-training commitment from the developer, and a requirement that 20% of the 2,000 apartments and condos be reserved for residents earning less than roughly $35,000 a year. It’s conceivable, she said, that someone will commute by elevator to a job in the supermarket that’s in the plans.

This is precisely the kind of mixed-income project Los Angeles badly needs, she argued. We live in a place where few people can afford to live near service-economy jobs, and that’s a contributing factor in everything from segregation to traffic to air quality. Grand Avenue is a model for future development, she said, and worth the millions in public subsidies.

I’m on board with that general concept, though I’m not convinced the developer should have gotten a penny in tax breaks on top of the sweetheart deal on the land. But my other concern is one I alluded to in the Wednesday column.

As billed, this project -- linked with great Grand Avenue institutions like Disney Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Colburn School -- will forever change the face of downtown Los Angeles.

Does it complement them? Is it what we want? Is it what we need? Do you feel as though you had enough of a chance to speak up? (If not, Tuesday could be your last chance, when both the City Council and Board of Supervisors are expected to sign off on the deal).

At the risk of offending a man who could soon be my boss, we’re about to turn over one of the rarest and most precious commodities in Los Angeles -- open space that’s owned by all of us -- to a mega-development that could be dropped into any city anywhere.

When I asked Janis what kind of shopping we might find among the retail shops, she said “high-end chains,” like Banana Republic, for instance.

I’m sorry, but I have a problem with that.

I have no interest in walking from a Banana Republic on Grand Avenue to the ESPN studios at the L.A. Live sports-entertainment complex planned for the other end of downtown, where I could look through the window at yammering monkeys.

Why not turn Grand Avenue into a tree-shaded, pedestrian-only promenade? Or build an all-season, outdoor theater for L.A. Phil rehearsals or Colburn student performances? The possibilities are endless.

But instead of creating a distinct sense of place that says something interesting about one of the world’s most dynamic cities, we’re in danger of building a monument to banality that happened to pencil out for the developer and figures to generate millions in taxes.

As Janis says, though, it’s a years-long project with lots of details still to be worked out, including the way the project connects with the Civic Center and a redesigned 16-acre park. So there’s time to tinker, and maybe still time for an injection of the very thing that gives the great cities of the world their sense of romance and mystery.

Imagination.

On a happier note, here’s an update: Shari Kahane of West Hills, the terminal cancer patient who was ticketed on Jan. 25 while lugging her oxygen tank to an office where she was going to sign her will and last testament, has some good news to report. The ticket has been rescinded. “I apologize for the actions of this traffic officer,” a parking enforcement official wrote to Kahane in a letter forwarded to me by the staff of Councilman Dennis Zine, which interceded in her behalf. “The Traffic Officer will be provided with additional training regarding his behavior with the public.”

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Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at www.latimes.com/lopez