From the Newsroom

Everyday

LA Weekly Takes a Look at Skid Row

By Eric Richardson — April 28, 2005
1 Comment

Sam Slovick has a story on Skid Row in this week's issue of the LA Weekly titled, "Down on Main Street." It's good alt-weekly irreverence, but it paints an interesting picture of the conflict between market-rate developers and those who want to secure Downtown's building stock for SRO's. “Why would anyone want to live on Main Street?” [Alice Callahan]...


Everyday

Tracing the Old State Building

By Eric Richardson — April 26, 2005
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shannon over at sha in LA had a post yesterday titled urban exploration in which she wrote: It all began about a year ago. I give tours of City Hall. The highlight of the tour is when we go up to the 27th floor observation deck and get a 360º view of Downtown. One day I noticed that across the street from City Hall there was a fenced off empty lot where...


Everyday

Last Remaining Seats

By Eric Richardson — April 26, 2005
1 Comment

I got my pamphlet for Last Remaining Seats in the mail today and eagerly opened it to see what films were playing where. There are four films Downtown -- but all at the Orpheum. Last year I very much enjoyed getting to see a couple films at the Los Angeles Theatre, and I was hoping to perhaps see that and another of the Downtown theatres such as the Palace...


Everyday

City Attorney's Office on NC Lobbyists

By Eric Richardson — April 22, 2005

If you remember way back to last October, you might recall that at a board meeting DLANC had disscussed whether lobbyists should be allowed to serve on neighborhood councils. Our discussion was in response to a whole swirling controversy that had included talk of a Council motion to bar lobbyists from the councils. To many, that didn't seem like something the...


Everyday

Well That's a New One

By Eric Richardson — April 21, 2005
1 Comment

Jaywalking Tickets

Walking over to Spring after getting off the 81 over at 7th and Hill I saw this LAPD officer with his cycle parked and lights on. He was standing on the corner of 7th and Broadway with his ticket book out. Turns out he was writing jaywalking tickets for people who entered the crosswalk after the hand had turned red. I know that bad ped behaviour slows up traffic...


Everyday

Morphosis Out from Grand Ave Team

By Eric Richardson — April 20, 2005
3 Comments

Architectural Record News today reports that Thom Mayne's firm Morphosis is off the Grand Ave team. It was after spending time reviewing initial concepts, as well as comments from public and team meetings that Related came to the conclusion that Morphosis wasn’t the appropriate fit for them. “Not every architect is right for every project,” says...


Everyday

Photos from Spring on Spring

By Eric Richardson — April 20, 2005
1 Comment

The Conservancy's Spring on Spring event was a couple weeks ago, but that doesn't mean it's too late to gaze at pictures people took. Today I ran across these pictures on the blog sha in LA. Shannon also has a great write-up from the event. And she links back here to blogdowntown in the sidebar, which makes me happy.


Everyday

CLA Also Likes Trolley Studies

By Eric Richardson — April 20, 2005

On a more fun note, the CLA also weighed in the other day advising Council to let the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) go ahead and award a $100,000 contract to the IBI Group to study the feasibility of a Downtown trolley system. I mentioned this last Monday, and also talked more extensively about the RFP back in December. Now, though, we get the fun details...


Everyday

CLA Weighs in on LATC

By Eric Richardson — April 20, 2005
1 Comment

I know some of you are probably getting tired of my coverage of this issue, but I think it's important enough to the community that it should get whatever space it needs. I'll try to make this summary short and throw the rest of my analysis into the body, though. As I reported on April 5th, the City Council's Budget and Finance Committee asked the Chief Legislative...


Everyday

Blocking Off City Hall

By Eric Richardson — April 19, 2005

Fun times Downtown this evening... DLANC's Arts Committee was supposed to meet at 7pm on the 10th floor of City Hall. Jason Waters and I were the first to arrive, and were greeted on 1st St. by General Services Police vehicles and flares blocking off the lanes closest to City Hall. The perimeter of South Lawn had officers standing at regular intervals. One...