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How the City of Angels Fell Head Over Heels for Transit

On a visit to L.A., a Vancouverite revels in a transit-fuelled downtown revival.

Doug Ward 26 Jan 2015TheTyee.ca

Doug Ward is a Vancouver freelance writer, who was previously a reporter at the Vancouver Sun.

One night in early December, we set off to explore Los Angeles' historic downtown and have some drinks in the new Ace Hotel, the latest and seventh member of the boutique hotel chain known for its bespoke hipster quirk and its ability to enliven -- alright, gentrify -- somewhat down-market central city hoods. We expected to find a scene at the Ace, especially at the hotel's rooftop bar where you can imbibe artisanal cocktails poolside amid the skyscrapers.

Downtown L.A. has been undergoing a renaissance over the past decade. It figured that the Ace, which opened a year ago, would be a magnet for young Angelenos seeking some metropolitan fix -- or at least a break from the narcotizing low-rise streetscape of palm-lined avenues, strip malls and beaches.

But we were surprised when we stumbled literally onto the red carpet of one of the biggest media stories of last year: the official premiere of Seth Rogen's The Interview, the frat-bro-buddy flick that angered North Korea and irritated many movie critics. The premiere was at the lavish United Artists Theatre, which takes up the lower floors of the 13-storey Ace Hotel building, which was built in 1927 to house the historic theatre and an office tower. The silent movie stars who founded United Artists Pictures, including Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, used the Spanish Gothic theatre for the world premieres of their movies.

But the Jazz Age theatre on South Broadway, like much of downtown L.A., lost its lustre after the Second World War. In recent decades it was used as a church by evangelist preachers -- and when I first visited downtown L.A. years ago the classic movie house had a bright neon sign proclaiming "Jesus Saves."

The developers behind the Ace Hotel refurbished the United Artists building and theatre, and so the fabled venue was back to its original glory on the night we visited with movie stars arriving in limousines and posing for photographers.

Downtown L.A. is hopping

While sections of the downtown are still desolate at night, the Ace Hotel was hardly the only place hopping. Not so long ago, it was tricky to find good grub in the downtown of one of the world's greatest cities. Not any more. The restaurant scene here has taken off with high-end chefs and packed rooms. We eat one night at the Alma Restaurant, which is across the street from the Ace Hotel and was voted best new restaurant in America in 2013 in Bon Appétit magazine. The Alma features a suitably precious $95/person 10-course tasting menu, which includes tiny perfect offerings of English muffins with burrata and caviar, seaweed fritter, Dungeness crab dumplings, cod with smoked brandade and purslane and American wagyu beef.

A decade ago, few people would have guessed that some of L.A.'s hottest kitchens would locate on some of its seediest blocks. Or that the United Artists Theatre would experience a neon-lit revival as a cultural gem. Or that L.A.'s historic downtown, with its wonderfully intact Beaux Arts and Art Deco office, retail and civic buildings, would be poised to reclaim its role as the vibrant heart of this mega-suburban city.

Or that this downtown of a city defined by the car could once again be the hub of a thriving transit system.

Indeed, city leaders have recognized -- and are reaping -- the benefits of an ambitious city transit strategy. In 2007, Los Angeles was at a transportation crossroads, not unlike the one Metro Vancouver faces today.

L.A. was immobilized by gridlock with an anticipated three million more residents expected over the next 30 years. Metro Vancouver is also hamstrung by traffic congestion with the prospect of a million new residents over the next three decades.

In 2008, a pro-transit advocacy group called Move LA, built a citywide business-labour-environmental coalition to back a landmark transit-funding referendum in 2008 known as Measure R.

More rail and rapid bus lines

The required two-thirds of Los Angeles County voters approved a half-cent sales tax increase that will provide an estimated $40 billion in funding for transportation over the next three decades, with 70 per cent of these funds going to finance clean public transit. The Measure R plan is the most ambitious transit expansion plan in the United States -- a doubling of L.A.'s rail and rapid bus transit lines, from 193 kilometres and 103 stations to 379 kilometres and 200 stations. Move LA is now working with various government agencies to accelerate the construction of 12 Measure R funded rail and bus rapid transit lines.

Just as the Metro Vancouver mayors are arguing in the upcoming plebiscite here, Move LA successfully persuaded enough residents that transit expansion was critical to the L.A. economy, its environment and to the ability of middle and lower-income people to reduce their transportation costs.

Move LA has provided advice to the pro-transit coalition behind the Metro Vancouver plebiscite, which proposes a 0.5-per-cent provincial sales tax hike, or "congestion improvement tax," within Metro Vancouver to finance a $7.5-billion package of transportation projects.

We travelled to the Ace Hotel that night by subway, which was fitting given that a scheduled massive expansion of transit throughout L.A. over the next decade is expected to accelerate the transformation of the downtown. This was the prediction we were given a few days later at the downtown office of Move LA executive director Denny Zane.

Zane said the 2008 referendum was the first major move to shift L.A. from an auto-dominant city to one with a powerhouse transit system. And the changing downtown will be at the heart of this new transit-friendly L.A., he added.

Rail lines lead downtown

"There are five transit lines under construction under Measure R and they all except for one converge on the downtown," said Zane. "And so we have a real opportunity to recreate a downtown economy that was really dead for decades. The transit expansion is huge for the region's economy and it will also be the linchpin for the region's greenhouse gas emission reduction strategy."

Zane recalled that prior to the Second World War, Los Angeles had a flourishing transit system, in fact the city's rail lines were the most comprehensive in the world, with even more mileage than New York City. The first half of the last century was the downtown's Golden Age with banks, department stores and a dozen classic movie houses, including the United Artists Theatre.

L.A.'s downtown had a population density on par with NYC, with more than 105,000 Angelenos living there by 1940.

But after the war, the downtown lost its status and economic clout with the white middle class and businesses fleeing to the suburbs. The "haves" embraced the car and the federally-funded freeway system -- and the once-thriving transit system came to serve the "have nots." The cluster of downtown movie houses became venues for swap meets, church services and Spanish-language movies. Despite the classic first-world corporate towers, the streetscape was dominated by working-class Hispanic shoppers lured to inexpensive stores, along with the poor and homeless.

"If you came to the downtown 20 years ago, you would have said it was a ghost town and wonder what the hell happened," said Move LA's Zane, the former leftish mayor of the affluent Santa Monica.

No parking

"And what happened is the downtown was originally built around street cars and rail. Very few of the older buildings have parking and the streets are not very wide. So when the automobile became the singular future after the war, downtown L.A. was caught without key infrastructure -- parking," said Zane.

"So the real estate market shifted to the periphery."

But L.A.'s downtown is now a place to live and work again, largely thanks to the city's move in 1999 to give the green light for the conversion of historic office buildings -- often under-used or abandoned -- into condominium and mixed-use structures. The Adaptive Reuse Ordinance ensured that these older buildings were not subjected to the same zoning and code requirements that apply to new construction, including requirements for parking. The new policy preserved the historic central core and created thousands of new housing units, with thousands more in the works, as the downtown becomes a desirable place to call home.

Population boom

In the late '90s, there were fewer than 20,000 residents in downtown L.A. despite the presence of many skyscrapers and civic buildings. Today, there are over 50,000 Angelenos living downtown.

Zane said the coming transit improvements funded by the sales tax increase will accelerate residential growth in the downtown -- which will, in turn, make the new subway and rail lines even more effective. "The re-emerging downtown will make these lines more successful than earlier projections might have expected -- and the greater access that these new lines create will make the downtown real estate market much hotter than it was five years ago," said Zane.

"By re-laying the new transit system largely on the same old infrastructure of the original system, then you really create the conditions for this downtown to re-emerge again -- and it is."

Not surprisingly, there has been a huge surge in property values in the area once synonymous with urban core decay.

Zane noted that Brookfield Office Properties, one of the largest owners of commercial properties in the U.S., purchased four office skyscrapers last year, giving it seven high-profile skyscrapers in L.A.'s financial district. While entertainment and technology companies have steered clear of the downtown in the past, Brookfield is betting that tenants will be lured to the area's growing retail, residential and entertainment scene.

"Brookfield bought six buildings in downtown after Measure R passed and I think there is no doubt that the prospect of an enhanced transit system providing access to and from the downtown increased their interest.

"They may have been interested before, but Measure R sealed the deal."

Zane said that the transit expansion set in motion by Measure R has been compared to the building of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which, under the supervision of engineer William Mulholland, moved water from rural Owens Valley to the San Fernando Valley and set the foundations that would turn L.A. into a metropolis.

Since my visit to L.A. over a month ago, the historic United Artists building that holds the Ace Hotel has been put up for sale. The Chicago-based firm that owns the landmark building is, according to media reports, asking for $100 million -- far more than the $11 million it paid in 2011.

The great challenge for L.A. will be to ensure that its revitalized downtown becomes a true centre for all of L.A.'s communities, and not just an upscale neighborhood for middle-class, mostly white, professionals moving back to the centre, after decades in the leafy suburbs.  [Tyee]

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