Downtown LA Revival—For Millennials Only?

You can pick up some of your most cogent, well-spoken market information from cab drivers… A hack in LA was no exception earlier this week. “It’s the smart young people who work hard and play hard who are moving into downtown.” And he should know—he shuttles them back-and forth between the Staples Center’s one-big open sports-bar scene and rental apartment towers, which spring up and shoehorn in among office buildings and decked parking garages east of the 110 Harbor Freeway. With people actually shopping and staying downtown in notable numbers, the lackluster Macy’s-Sheraton Hotel block is getting a total makeover and the dated, uninspiring Wilshire Grand hotel has been demolished and will be replaced by a new sloping-glass office-hotel-retail complex—the tallest building in the West, another cabbie knew all about that. More Times Square light-and-sign displays are in the offing like the ones in the Staples Center plaza. And now the local law has been changed after 40 years to give developers and their architects the freedom to design skyscraper projects without helipad landing strips, opening the possibility for more alluring skyline designs.

Downtown has come a long way since the first time I visited more than 30 years ago. Then one fall evening circa 1983 gazing down from the meeting/event space at the top of the city’s tallest office building, First Interstate Tower, all you saw below were cars emerging from  underground parking garages to return home—the sidewalks were lifeless, the street scene dead after dark. It was the classic 9 to 5 office business node, and occupancies and rents were headed one way–down. Certainly no developer in his right mind would have thought of building apartments.