Brown Canceling State Building Sale
Eric Richardson
[Flickr]
A pair of pedestrians walk along the empty 3rd street face of the Ronald Reagan State Office Building.
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Governor Jerry Brown announced today that he intends to scrap his predecessor's plan to sell off 11 California state office buildings, including the Ronald Reagan building and the Junipero Serra building in Downtown.
The plan would have brought the state approximately $1.2 billion in quick one-time revenue, but would have left it paying much more in rent over the long-term.
Now can we get some action on making the two buildings a little more pedestrian friendly?.
David McBane on February 09, 2011, at 03:19PM – #1
You think the state is ever going to make the buildings more pedestrian friendly? If you really wanted that, then you should support the buildings going private because they are the only private owners are the only ones that might listen. The state is too big to ever focus on making the buildings more pedestrian friendly.
By the way, the state is already cutting the maintenance for its buildings. In a few years, I predict you having articles about how the buildings are falling into disrepair.
Brady Westwater (@bradywestwater) on February 10, 2011, at 07:35AM – #2
When the CRA helped fund the conversion of the old Broadway Department Store at 4th and Broadway into a new state office building it was MANDATED that there be retail on the ground floor. And when I saw that they were not making any effort to find tenants, I - for many years - tried to show the spaces to potential tenants, but was never allowed to, starting back when I was still living in mMlibu and had not moved Downtown full time yet.
Then, when the new Mayor was elected, the weekend after James Hahn had moved out of City Hall and before Antonio Villaraigosa had moved in - a fleet of moving trucks pulled up on a Sunday or Saturday - and started loading furniture into those vacant spaces. By Monday morning, drawn blinds and tinted windows hid the fact that all the space that was supposed to be retail had been illegally converted into office space by the State of California.
Clearly, the State committed this criminal act on the weekend when the leadership of the city was changing since they rightly guessed no one would in either the old or the new administration would notice what those trucks were doing.
Later the State would claim, I mean, lie to the people of Los Angeles, that they were forced to move in their employees into the retail spaces since no one had been interested in renting the storefronts - storefronts which they had for years refused to allow licensed real estate agents to even show.
Eric Wang on February 11, 2011, at 10:46AM – #3
Wow, Brady, if that's true, then even more shame on the State for making that street into a dead zone. Those two buildings are uninteresting and monolithic as it is, and coupled with all the Joe's parking lots along Spring and Main, 2nd up to 4th, it's a sad experience to have to walk that way. I wasn't a fan of Origami, Lot 44, and wasn't around for the bakery at the Douglas Building, but those businesses no doubt suffered a bit because of the dead zone there.