Another look at downtown L.A.

Backstory: About five weeks ago the L.A. Times ran a controversial piece about downtown real estate, pointing out "signs that downtown's residential boom is slowing, if not stalling out altogether." I say controversial because the story unleashed a flood of comments on this blog, many of them from defenders of life downtown who were angry about the article  (That was the thread in which I was accused of having a  "Westside white-bread classist attitude").

Now the new part: Today's paper takes another look, a friendlier look, at life downtown, this time focusing on the industrial district and its "intoxicatingly youthful vibe."

"Here, away from the bustling sidewalks and skyscrapers of the city center, narrow, quiet tree-lined streets intersected by old rail lines have become magnets for urban residents looking for a different downtown experience. ... Birds chirp over the low rumbling of trucks. Residents say the area reminds them of New York's TriBeCa or Chelsea districts when they were just becoming residential hot spots."

I'm anxious to hear your comments on this one, but first just one piece of newspaper spin on publishing two seemingly contradictory stories about downtown: they're both valid views of what's happening. Yes, the residential boom appears to be slowing down. And yes, there is also a growing community of people who enjoy living downtown.

There, my spin. Your thoughts? Comments? Email story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com. FYI: Long weekend ahead. No new blog posts until late Monday.  Comments will post, eventually.

Comments

[Steve]

I have been in every major city in the US and I have to say downtown LA is unique, a complete hell hole of crime and gang bangers. It is the only city where if you have money you work only in LA and leave at night for your one hour drive to your safe suburb. I knew people in OC that were 40 years plus of age who had never set foot in downtown LA, only 30 miles away. There is a reason LA cannot attract a NFL team in downtown LA, because no one with money and a brain wants to go there. This latest rend that it is hip to live there will last a week.

[JK]

Peter, the residents didn't liike your first article so you put up a more flattering one? I don't care how anyone tries to spin it, Downtown LA is expensive, dirty and dangerous. Anybody paying real money to live there, especially off the beaten path, should have their head examined!

[Ralph]

Downtown LA has mid to long term growth potential as more people look to transit (pedestrian), modern and urban oriented communities. Inner city (re)development does not happen from one day to the next, and this partly depends on the incentives put in place. In this sense, Downtown LA should look to Philadelphia's policies (tax incentives, etc) that attract people (and businesses) into an urban lifestyle/community. There are several factors that will drive Downtown LA's future growth:

1) The right incentives policies (tax rebates, etc).
2) Young, affluent people seeking a transit/urban oriented lifestyle.
3) A higher quality (and more economical) housing stock - compare this to the many antiquated/outdated units on the west side.
4) Room for development - unlike the west side, there is ample room for new developments (retail, etc).

Network externalities are an inherent feature of any development. As more people/businesses move-in to Downtown LA, the value of the area will rise dramatically. Consequently, all of the present drawbacks (such as crime, urban blight, etc) will be driven out by market forces that no longer make it feasible for these to exist.

One should not be blindfolded by the current housing slump (affecting the whole market systematically), with the positive fundamentals that will drive Downtown LA's mid to long term growth.

[JDZ]

Lefty must be sleeping in. I wonder what he'll think of this article once he wakes up and checks the blog? Hmmmm. If we only had prior clues . . .

[Cameron]

I lived in several downtown areas and I agree, downtown LA is just gross.
Why would anyone want to live surrounded by really crazy homeless, low-end hookers, meth-mouthed druggies and illegal alien gang-bangers? Add to that the constant, all-night roar of helicopters overhead guaranteeing a bad night's sleep.

During the day it's turned into Tijuana and after getting hassled by bums on the street one too many times, I even avoid downtown during the day.

Until the police and city's political machine can grow a pair and clean up that sewer, I'll keep drivin' the 101 escape route after work.

[peter m]

I will make a short brief retort to this fluff LA times masterful spin job & agi-prop piece on the warehouse district east of DwTN. I know that district and it is not an inviting district unless U really like living in an edgy 100-year old crumbling run-down decayed warehouse slummy industrial district. Some of those side streets are reeking, slimy and polluted with produce and delivery truck debris strewn over the crumbling potholed streets. There is abundant homeless & derelicks in this district.
The buildings are for the most part aging decaying brick wreaks from turn if the century & still used as cheap warehouses for fly by night importers of garments and electronics.
I have beeen to one street, traction ave off Alameda, which does have a hip artist communuity in lofts but go 1 block out out of there and u are in the REAL decayed warehouse crumbling hood

[caroline]

Cameron,

Grow a pair? Do you mean testicles? Testicles are the common denominator of every problem you cited in your litany. Yes, prosties are often female, but there are more Johns than prosties and the Johns fund the industry. I never saw a meth lab run by women, though they might exist. Gangs, aggressive pandhandlers...again. mostly the testicle-bearing part of the population. So, how about snipping off a pair and getting a city that is safe for women?

[caroline]

Cameron,

Grow a pair? Do you mean testicles? Testicles are the common denominator of every problem you cited in your litany. Yes, prosties are often female, but there are more Johns than prosties and the Johns fund the industry. I never saw a meth lab run by women, though they might exist. Gangs, aggressive pandhandlers...again. mostly the testicle-bearing part of the population. So, how about snipping off a pair and getting a city that is safe for women?

[peter m]

"Here, away from the bustling sidewalks and skyscrapers of the city center, narrow, quiet tree-lined streets intersected by old rail lines have become magnets for urban residents looking for a different downtown experience. ... Birds chirp over the low rumbling of trucks. Residents say the area reminds them of New York's TriBeCa or Chelsea districts when they were just becoming residential hot spots."

Quiet tree-lined streets in the warehouse district?

I don't know of one street that fits that description. Quiet it may be because the warehouse district empties out at 5 pm and the only evening activity is the usual derelicts and a few brave pioneer 'residents' Even the gang bangers don't go into this area because of its very lifelessness and sterility.

Warehouse district becoming a 'residential hotspot' is the RE dumb quote of the year, just like the quote by an IE economist that the IE was the 'center of the universe'.

[D]

Peter Viles wrote:
Random personal observation: I've been working downtown for 3 1/2 months now, and the thing that strikes me is the lack of shopping. It's pretty much a retail dead zone. Just before Christmas I was trying to sneak in some lunch-hour Christmas shopping, and after a couple of attempts came to the conclusion it couldn't be done downtown, which surprised me. I don't know of another big American city where that's true

Peter, I work a block from the LA Times and to say there is no shopping downtown is crazy. Walk down Broadway or Los Angeles Street and there is every kind of Mom and Pop imaginable. There's the Jewelry District, the Toy District,The Fashion District. What were you looking for, a Target or Tiffany's?

Maybe that's were the "Westside white-bread classist attitude" cam from.

D

[Lisa]

I would 100 times rather live in downtown L.A. than in any no-culture, boring, strip mall filled, uninspired, cookie cutter, beige, blah suburb.

Very close friends of mine own a condo in a beautiful new complex downtown that is literally equivalent to living in a resort. We house sat last summer and walked every morning to Coffee Bean, and later would walk to grocery shop at the very nice, new Ralph's.

Sometimes I wonder if the people who write these comments have ever been to the areas they disparage so vehemently. The way they talk, downtown might as well be the boogie man.

Here's a few things downtown-phobic people are missing out on: the downtown Public Library, the Moca, ice skating in Pershing Square, shabu shabu in Little Tokyo, Grand Central Market, Clifton's Cafeteria, umm vitality, culture, history, diversity.

In the favor of the suburbs: Chili's, tract homes, the Gap, sitting in traffic for hours to get home.

[Uncle Billy Climbs Mont Pelerin]

How many people live dowtown in "lofts."? How many of these apartments are there? Were the celebrities that purchased places downtown given incentives to do this (there were two or three if I remember)? What celebrity in their right mind would live there? Do any? If they were sold apartments as investments, how long do they expect to hold them before seeing a return?

The whole thing just seems to contrived to work. These mavericks who rave about the vibe -- aren't they going to get tired of justifying themselves in a few years?

Supposedly the Grand Avenue project got unstuck and is moving forward. Is it really? How come no mention of this in article?

[apennysaved]

Go Caroline!
It's too bad but so true.

[mc]

Having always wanting to live downtown (grew up in the San Gabriel Valley...namely, Covina), I finally took the plunge after moving back from San Francisco. I lived in the Old Bank District, in a beautiful building. We "urban pioneers" as everyone liked to call us, had great hope. I was on the Downtown Neighborhood Council, I worked from my "soft loft" and hung out with my neighbors, trying to build a better community.

I moved out three years later. Tired of trendsters or the nouveau riche wanting to live in a "loft" but not contribute to the neighborhood. They shopped at Gelson's, worked on the westside or weho and bitched about the homeless and drug problems, once they opened their eyes and realized that downtown wasn't a sanitized bit of disney fluff. The glowing newspaper and magazine articles didn't paint the full picture for them and they didn't take a good look around before they signed their leases.

The industrial district has some lovely buildings and units. Some wonderful people living there. But it's so isolated. If I were going to SciArc or still working from home, maybe. But there is a disconnect between the novelty and reality of making (or trying to make) a life downtown. I'm a tough girl, but I could only take so many mentally ill people or ex cons following me from the gym or Grand Central Market and whispering the filthy things they'd like to do to me if they could. It's dangerous. And scary. I'm not one to admit that easily, but it's true.

[mbob]

As a one-time fearless urban 'steader not far from where Jack White just fled in Detroit, we finally got held up once too many times, the pit bull got bribed into a truck with apparently several pounds of 'burger and all our vehicles went hot. Jack, too recently got the news and left for Tennessee. Or London. Or New York. He has options.
Political desertion will have to stop, heavy vehicle traffic will have to disappear, foot traffic will have to become survivable before well-meaning individuals will be able to dwell in central LA without mortal jeopardy as their natural state.

[xtine]

You guys are mean.

Cookie cutter "living lofts" are gross and overpriced hotels. I think that's what's suffering. TRUE industrial loft living, which is something most of your readers cannot understand, is alive and well down there.

Downtown is gorgeous to those of us with the aesthetic to appreciate it. I understand if you don't "get it" in the same way I do not "get" the west side. But that doesn't make peter wrong for printing it.

And you know what else? The artists living down there don't want you all to get it. The longer you stay away, the longer they can stay.

[fred]

Downtown is dead. It's dead because of the greedy developers who wanted instant gratification by charging obscene amounts of money for very little apartments with ridiculously high ceilings. They thought they could create a neighborhood like Soho, NY in four years. It took Soho forty years to become the elitist, soul-less investment banker infested dump that it is today. And at this rate it will take Downtown LA twice as long to become the elitist, soul-less investment banker infested dump these developer always dreamed it would be. Way to go morons.

[John]

Both sides of the downtown story are correct, but they both leave something out.

The thing they are leaving out is that property is fully priced as though Downtown and the nearby "hip" neighborhoods have completely gentrified and are now safe, the schools are great, and there are plenty of amenities nearby.

But that hasn't happened yet.

These trendy neighborhoods would be wonderful places for students and young singles and professional couples and the usual "urban pioneer" crowd (a term I hate because it implies that the largely non-white pre-existing residents don't exist or matter), if the market was remotely realistic and these properties were available for about HALF their current asking price, which would be in line with incomes / traditional real estate values / etc.

Instead, the rational Angeleno who wants a decent life without living way out in the burbs can either rent something perfectly nice in a decent neighborhood for an affordable amount (as a lot of us do), or we can spend big bucks to live in a neighborhood in a transitioning neighborhood, because the neighborhoods that are further along in the gentrification process are even more out of reach.

Those with money are buying on the assumption that their homes/condos will continue to increase in value, and retailers are starting to provide amenities now that they see money moving in. But this may turn around in a heartbeat as people stop spending as freely and their mortgages get upside down, and independent boutique retail may have a difficult time surviving that.

It's funny, in the most economically segregated city in the country, the well-off and poor are now sharing neighborhoods.

The real question is which of these areas will correct without becoming blight and provide a decent chance at middle class home ownership?

[keith]

"Consequently, all of the present drawbacks (such as crime, urban blight, etc) will be driven out by market forces that no longer make it feasible for these to exist.

One should not be blindfolded by the current housing slump (affecting the whole market systematically), with the positive fundamentals that will drive Downtown LA's mid to long term growth."

Ugh, how many times has this been said over the last 20 years by various downtown snake-oil salesmen? Trouble is downtown living just doesn't attract enough people to wash away the problems caused by poverty, gangs & homelessness. Sure some people will be attracted to it, just as some people are attracted to skydiving, firewalking and biting the heads off of live cobras.

[Perdido en el Pueblo]

I'd have to agree with the sentiment a lot of folks have said about hoping for a more liveable Downtown. It has a lot of the elements many Angelenos are looking for (public transit, a strong historical tie, the ability to walk to local amenities), but too much of it is a dump or a farce of itself.

To provide one example, you can walk down Main Street, looking south from First Street and you find a few gentrified blocks of little stories and scenester lofts and condos. You go down two more blocks and you basically have Skid Row. It is just the dramatic line of bohemian opulence and naked destitution that makes this area really unlivable. You really have to be relatively wealthy or homeless to live there. Now if there was an affordable stock (I mean genuinely affordable, not Westside affordable) of housing I could imagine more young professionals willing to take a chance on the area. At least it'd scare your parents in Irvine.

Not to mention where are the schools or the parks? There's a Ralph's now, but next to the Staples Center. You'd have to drive there from the Bank or Artist District.

And did I mention that if I were female, I'd never live there. Or at least never want to walk alone there at night. There are some seriously scary looking blocks.

[Justin]

Downtown Los Angeles will never be SOHO, partially because Los Angeles doesn't have enough investment bankers to make it SOHO.

Downtown Los Angeles, would be appealing to actors, writers, other artists etc who are just starting out their careers (but not at ridiculously high prices).

I'm not against urban areas, and I do like downtown LA because of it's convenience to all the parts of Los Angeles I go to. But with that said, I agree, you will never, ever turn this area into a high priced neighborhood, and real estate prices here will drop much lower than the rest of LA. Once, I was buying a burger and a bum threatened to steal it from me (I'm 6'3"). I threatened to beat him down, and he walked away. If I had been a 5'3" woman (or even a little guy), he would have felt more comfortable in attacking me.

[russell]

Nothing will ever remove the cloud of smog hanging over downtown LA on most days. It would not be that bad of a place to live otherwise. As long as you stay in the good half of it.

[Susan]

I grew up in Los Angeles. I first started reading about the downtown "boom" and gentrification when I was 15 years old. I lived in a loft for a few years when I was in my mid-20's and people were talking about the boom that's finally sort of happening. "The rents are going up, look at the businesses that are opening here".

I'll be 40 next year and we're still talking about a downtown boom that's not quite there.

Soooo, L.A..

[Eric Qzaki]

If you are new to Los Angeles, you might want to take a look at the LAPD gang injunction areas before listening to this nonsense. I would recommend against re-locating a family into the "10 Gang Area" west of the 110 for example. Really Bad Idea.

http://www.qzaki.com/Archive/LA_Gang_Injunctions.pdf

So long as Mayor Villaraigosa and Police Chief Bratton continue to coddle illegal alien gang bangers, downtown is doomed. Who would have thought Chief "Broken Windows" would be so soft on violent criminal gangs?

[Bert Green]

Comparing any part of downtown LA to neighborhoods in New York is pretty useless, especially if you have not lived and worked in both places for many years. But even worse is locals being unable to distinguish the different neighborhoods in downtown Los Angeles from one another. The Industrial District is not the Historic Core. The Financial District is not Little Tokyo. Seems to me the bashers of downtown don't even know downtown, even if they claim to have spent time there.

There are many thousands of people living downtown. Don't like it? Don't live there. Afraid of it? Stay away. But spreading LIES about crime? In the second lowest violent crime zone in LA? What's the point of that?

Urban life in Los Angeles will probably always remain a marginal activity due to the large numbers of car-dependent suburbanites that can't fathom what it might be like to live without a car, but guess what? People do it. And like it.