Why L.A. Is Being Screwed By L.A. Live, and What The City Can Do About It

by Tony Chavira

This is L.A. Live, an entertainment-focused development in downtown Los Angeles that includes the Los Angeles Convention Center, the Staples Center for Lakers, Clippers, Sparks and Kings games, the Nokia Theater for the Grammys and other shows, and several other small theaters and restaurants:

Next up, AEG, L.A. Live’s owners, want to knock down part of the convention center (at the bottom) and put an NFL stadium in its place.

But for all their economic firepower and awesome renderings of what future development can bring, AEG is screwing the people of Los Angeles. In case you haven’t noticed, the neighborhood surrounding L.A. Live has benefited very little from it being there. It’s not that AEG didn’t have good intentions when they sold the mega-development’s concept to the city; they knew it would serve as a focal point for the area and an economic engine for Downtown. Besides, downtown Los Angeles needed more attractions like this as anchor points for local businesses, and theaters, dancing, bowling and a stadium (or two) fit that bill nicely.

So even though we’re getting screwed, it’s not really AEG’s fault. The real problem with L.A. Live, the reason why it’s not contributing boatloads of tax money to the city, is that city planners and officials couldn’t see the neighborhood beyond L.A. Live’s borders: Olympic Boulevard to the north, Figueroa Street to the east, the 110 Freeway on the west and the 10 Freeway on the south.

City planners and politicians knew that adding big, walkable, outdoor commercial spaces usually spurs local businesses explosions, but it seems they forgot what it’s like to live in Los Angeles: just about everyone still has to drive to get anywhere. Being obliviously optimistic, the city made L.A. Live play by all of the old rules (the ones that made Los Angeles the traffic-heavy, unwalkable ultra-suburb it is today) and required AEG to provide parking. Businesses usually need to build a certain number of parking spaces, depending on their size, and since L.A. Live’s pretty damn big with a lot of different kinds of spaces, the city forced it to provide a ton of parking to accommodate us.

And in playing by the rules, AEG abided. All kinds of arrangements were made to make this work too: some parking spaces were built underground, some deals with cut with lots across the street. And because local landowners knew that L.A. Live wasn’t going to have enough parking when the Grammys or NBA Finals go down, other, cheaper parking lots were built throughout the surrounding neighborhood.

For all that optimism, the parking requirement shot the city of Los Angeles in the foot. Instead of strolling past surrounding businesses on your way to and from L.A. Live, you drive right up to it, park in it, then leave it. And in the process, ignore the community around it, as though these businesses are not even there. If you don’t have to walk through them in order to get to L.A. Live, what’s the point in even having community around it?

So STEP #1: Parking shouldn’t be too near L.A. Live. Obviously we still need places to park, but the city of Los Angeles should have made sure the spaces were at least three blocks away. As much as you might hate the idea that it’s not convenient, you would still be forced to pass other local businesses in order to get to your Kings vs. Ducks game, and ultimately the neighborhood would win, regardless of the game’s outcome.

The city could even provide incentives. Businesses could be allowed to move right up by the curb to appeal to shoppers. Or restaurants could spill a few feet into the street to attract passersby. Whatever it takes to attract patrons on their way to see Beyoncé at the Nokia Theater or to Lakers vs. Celtics game at Staples; because with parking not right at L.A. Live, people will walk past businesses and the business will make money.

The city would have to work with these small business owners to beautify the streets (now that people will have to walk on them). But what is the city’s incentive to make downtown streets look pretty when they only need to be used for cars? And who’s going to feel comfortable walking down a street where cars are flying around at 40 mph? This brings us to STEP #2: slow down the surrounding streets to let walkers feel safe. Just check out how many lanes Figueroa has:

No sane person would feel comfortable crossing an eight-lane highway to get anywhere. Some of our freeways have fewer lanes than Figueroa. It’s no wonder we want to park right next to L.A. Live.

But it’s amazing what people put up with to get around in Los Angeles, and some creative stuff has been done to keep people from getting run over: solid lines to keep you from switching lanes, more of those little bumps to annoy you into slowing down, even a pedestrian bridge over the street. But Figueroa wasn’t designed to integrate L.A. Live into the city. Instead, it was widened to make sure car traffic kept on flowing. And Olympic, on the north, has six lanes. With highways on two sides and freeways on two other sides, L.A. Live doesn’t seem to be part of the downtown Los Angeles landscape at all, and its sad excuses for streets do a great job of completely separating it from everything else.

But they were designed to move cars, not help walkers or accommodate local businesses. No matter how many lights flash or cops patrol the streets, drivers will move at whatever speed they want. People are still going to move as quickly as they feel it takes to get to their appointments on time. Obviously, those speeds don’t help pedestrians, and only feed into the idea that you should just park at L.A. Live rather than risk getting mowed down on your way there.

Speaking of imminent death, with quickly moving cars flowing through the area and deals cut for more parking space, the area is surrounded by flat surface parking lots. STEP #3: Build something on those lots.

Let’s say that the city grew some balls and decided that parking should only be more than three blocks away from L.A. Live and even shrunk the streets from eight to four lanes ... there would still be flat, desolate surface lots everywhere. Until something gets built over those lots, most sane people will be afraid of walking through them at night. Dead zones are called that for a reason: there’s a chance you’ll die if you stay in them too long. And it doesn’t help that downtown Los Angeles’s dead zones are unattended parking lots known to be shady after hours. Remember: there are people in L.A. who still think, even with all this new stuff, that Downtown is seedy, gang-ridden and full of crazy people. And since Downtown still has plenty of unwalkable streets and empty parking lots, there are also still plenty of news stories that reinforce those fears.

But imagine if the city commanded that no surface parking lot could be within a five-block radius of L.A. Live. Sure, there’d be a lot of fury about socialism and whatnot, but then what? Developers would put their parking lots further away, and nearby landowners would be forced to build places that made them money. Shops, restaurants, dry cleaners, bakeries, markets, apartments, you name it. They’d even want the streets beautified to make their businesses more attractive. How is that a negative?

But the money for beautification needs to come from somewhere. Enter STEP #4: localize our tax base. We’ve all noticed that the city is totally cool kowtowing to bigwigs like AEG who want to slap up their gaudy megadevelopments. They give these guys money, incentives, rent assistance, tax breaks ... they might even get exemptions from Environmental Impact Reports. Sometimes these projects are green-lit and pushed through with the highest priority codes the city has, while mom-and-pop shops are forced to deal with cumbersome city policies whenever they want to build anything.

But all of that is totally okay as long as those huge, flagship tenants bring other businesses to the area. Consider a city like a mall: if you slap a Macys in it, you can be pretty sure Macys will draw customers, and other shops will benefit from it being there. Maybe the Macys pays no rent at all, and even gets moving assistance, but it’s worth it to make money everywhere else: food courts, small shops, carts, parking charges, whatever. By charging for the other 75% of the mall space, the mall owners make lots of money. They only have one job: make sure you walk past the rent-paying stores before you get to Macys.

Similar plans work across the business spectrum. For example, if Amazon bundled iPads at cost with some accessories, they’ll make a killing on those highly-marked-up accessories. In fact, some businesses solely depend on the income generated from their smaller sellers. Consider Netflix: they surely lose money when they have to buy 900,000 copies of Shark Night 3D and you return the DVD overnight, but they surely make money when you keep that Wings of Desire DVD for six weeks. In the end, the small titles end of making enough money to outweigh the big ones.

L.A. Live is the big draw. It’s the Macys, the iPad at cost, the 900,000 copies of Shark Night 3D, the reason you got into your car and fought traffic from Costa Mesa into Los Angeles. But it’s not what makes the city money. The rest of the neighborhood makes the city money, and plenty of it. The 12 surrounding blocks, that pay their fair share in taxes, are the real reason it’s smart to totally subsidize L.A. Live and/or a new football stadium.

But if the city of Los Angeles isn’t going to take these four necessary steps to beef up the community and economy around L.A. Live, Staples, the Nokia and the Convention Center, what good will subsidizing a new stadium do? If people can drive right up to it, park in it, and leave it right away, and the city is put on the hook for its design, construction, street widening, traffic policing and 30-year tax breaks, how exactly is putting a stadium in Los Angeles a smart idea?

It’s as though our politicians don’t even care that we’re in a recession. They need to learn from past mistakes: either change the streets or don’t build the stadium. There is no other way.

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