The city that helped the nation define urban sprawl has approved a plan to redevelop its downtown and, Los Angeles officials hope, attract thousands of people back to the heart of the city so many fled for suburbia.
The City Council voted last week to spend $2.4 billion to revamp the blighted core of downtown and eventually build about 13,000 housing units that would include low-income housing as well as more luxurious apartment complexes.
The trend is growing across the country.
“In almost every major city we are beginning to see this happen,” said Paul Jacob, vice chairman of RTKL, one of the world’s largest architecture and design companies. “It is the reverse of sprawl.”
One of the groups that developers think will be attracted to the new urban center is young professionals who grew up amid the manicured lawns and back-yard pools of the quintessential California suburb–the San Fernando Valley.
“What they are attracted to is that this is the antithesis of suburbia,” Jacob said.
The projected future center of the nation’s second-largest city also will include more offices, shops, grocery stores, movie theaters and other entertainment venues, allowing people to live and work in the center of town. Some could even abandon automobiles.
“For Los Angeles, that is quite a breakthrough,” said Jacob, who is working on part of the redevelopment close to the multiuse Staples Center, home of the Los Angeles Lakers and frequently a concert venue.
As the city’s population has grown to 3.6 million people, housing, particularly for middle- and lower-income families, has become more scarce. People spend more time commuting, but for many that has reached its limit.
“L.A. was built around a mass-transit system called the car,” said Maura O’Connor, a real estate lawyer in Los Angeles. “We are realizing the limits to that system now.”
In addition to the downtown reconstruction, there has been progress in building light-rail lines and a subway system with connections to Union Station downtown.
Hall, cathedral in works
Separate from the new plans for downtown, two other major projects are expected to add vibrancy to central Los Angeles. Just on the edge of the decaying center, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is nearing completion. Nearby is Disney Hall, a concert venue scheduled to open next year.
The Staples Center project was partly responsible for the broader development plan for the area. To get permission to build the center, just south of downtown, developers had to promise to come up with a detailed vision for the area immediately around the complex.
The City Council has now taken the first step toward an even bigger overhaul for an area that has been in decline for decades.
As new freeways and suburbs lured businesses and residents away from the core of the city and as high-end commercial real estate was developed close to the old center, the traditional heart of the city turned into a Skid Row featuring deserted buildings, drug dealers and homeless people.
As part of the council-approved plan, about $150 million would be provided over 30 years to help the homeless in the old downtown area.
This massive project will take decades to complete and will involve 879 acres.
Like so many other plans to limit sprawl and redevelop urban areas, this one is not without conflict. Some say the gentrification will come at the expense of the poor, and others criticize attempts by wealthy business people to bring a professional football team back to the city.
While that is not in the plan, Colorado entrepreneur Philip Anschutz said Thursday that he plans to build a 64,000-seat football stadium in the center of Los Angeles that could be the home of the San Diego Chargers or another National Football League team. He said investors would spend up to $450 million of private money for the stadium at no cost to taxpayers.
Mayor James Hahn gave cautious approval, saying: “No taxes, no risk to taxpayers.”
Some developers are skeptical in part because downtown is distant from what most often drives upscale development–the Pacific Ocean.
“There are no natural resources downtown,” said Paul Jennings, chief executive officer of PCS Development.
Jennings said he doubts that downtown would be attractive to wealthier individuals. He said those who could afford expensive housing would be attracted to coastal areas and predicted the new downtown would be more of a middle-class community that would also attract former suburban young people looking for a more bohemian, urban experience.
Higher revenue expected
Financing for the project was approved following studies that predicted property tax revenues would rise sharply as the value of the downtown properties rose. To sustain the development, the City Council plan directed that 80 percent of any new tax revenue go to the Community Redevelopment Agency, which will oversee the project.
That money otherwise would go to the city, county and Los Angeles Unified School District.
While demographics have convinced developers that Los Angeles is ready for a return to urban living, other factors have to be considered.
“For young parents there will be the question of schools,” said lawyer O’Connor, who added that she would love to live downtown if not for her young child.
And then there is the city’s culture.
“There is this culture of the back yard,” O’Connor said. “If you live in Manhattan, the child plays in the apartment, or you take them to the park. Not so in L.A.”
