LA Business Journal on Who Owns Downtown

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Lots of interesting stuff in the LA Business Journal this week in their section "Who Owns Downtown." Particularly of note is Joel Kotkin's commentary. The LABJ site pulls out this quote:

It would be misleading to suggest that the current addition of perhaps several thousand people into central Los Angeles represents anything more than a blip in what is a dispersed, multi-polar region.

But I think it's more interesting to take a look at his conclusion.

Perhaps it would be best to build on parts of downtown that have grown on their own – the specialty districts, the ethnic hubs, the communities around government and religion. We should also support the grassroots efforts around the artist districts and the adaptive re-use of older buildings. We should focus more on the small things, like keeping downtown safe and clean, instead of opting for the grandiose.

I agree that Downtown development needs to be rooted in the things our area is good at, and that projects need to be driven by economics rather than political posturing. However, I think the idea of a strong Downtown is much more than just centralized jobs.

I'm not going to try to argue job numbers as percentages of the region or anything like that. I don't have the numbers in front of me, and frankly I don't think they're all that important. No one can argue again Downtown as a critical job center in the Los Angeles region. And while the periphery of Los Angeles has indeed grown in the past years, what's far more important to me is the rapid reduction in Downtown's office vacancy rates. There are a lot of jobs in Downtown LA, and what's so different this time around is that now we're creating a residential infrastructure to support these jobs.

The reality is that people are starting to finally let LA's traffic get to them. No one really wants to commute. The residential development now occuring in Downtown offers a portion of the workforce a chance to eliminate a major stress from their lives and live within walking distance of where they're employed. Springing up around these developments are the important accompanying services: restaurants, retail, and nightlife. Suddenly the opportunity opens for a livable urban life in the Los Angeles region, something that hasn't been possible for decades (if ever).

Downtown is the only area in Los Angeles that can handle a rapid increase in density. We are the hub of Los Angeles' growing public transportation infrastructure. The raw capacity exists right here. That's why people are so eager to find what will be the right combination to jumpstart growth in Downtown: they can see what it could be.

As I said before, this development has to be driven by rational economics. But if it is -- and I think economics can support the development we're seeing right now -- the results will stick. These developments won't be the civic boondoggles Kotkin (probably correctly) assesses previous efforts to be.