L.A. Close-Up
Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Patricia Kirk
No two California metro areas have as much and as little in common as Los Angeles and Hollywood.
Downtown Los Angeles is the city's financial center, and Hollywood an entertainment and tourist destination. However, both have visions of being urban meccas attracting foreign and local pedestrians to their respective mix of urban retail 24-7.
With an infusion of an estimated $4 billion, Hollywood is bouncing back with upscale shopping, world-class dining, and sizzling entertainment venues keeping streets active day and night, notes Martin McDermott, vice president in the Los Angeles office of Grubb & Ellis, specializing in investment sales.
Downtown, on the other hand, which has seen $17.6 billion invested still has a ways to go. Local developer Mark Weinstein, president of Santa Monica, Calif.-based MJW Investments, which repositioned eight historic manufacturing buildings in the Fashion District to residential, retail and creative space, believes the area is 75 percent there, noting some areas where dining and entertainment are springing up.
“We're not a 24-7 market yet,” says Carol Schatz, president and CEO of the Central City Association, which operates the Downtown Center Business Improvement District (BID), “but places are rocking all day into the early morning hours.”
In the late 1990s the city began adopting policies that encourage adaptive reuse and mixed-use development, generating a plethora of new projects that brought residential and retail uses catering to an inter-generational mix of professionals. They are predominately hip, creative young adults seeking an urban lifestyle.
Traditionally an employment center with a very small residential community downtown has had a steeper climb than Hollywood, which though blighted, had continued to be a densely populated district of working-class neighborhoods and home to the entertainment industry, a number of educational institutions and two hospitals.
That's entertainment
New cultural facilities like the Disney Concert Hall, along with the revival of the city's theater district and proliferation of restaurants, eclectic nightclubs and bars has made downtown residency so desirable, Weinstein notes, there are now significant numbers of reverse commuters.
L.A. Live, a $2.5 billion retail-entertainment complex opening this fall in the Entertainment District next to Staples Center, will boost downtown's around-the- clock visibility with a collection of signature restaurants and entertainment venues luring visitors and locals alike and potentially boosting the number of events booked at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
“Now if you come to L.A. for a convention, you'll be able to see a Lakers or Kings game, catch a Sting concert, or hear bands like the Eagles or Aerosmith, says Lew Feldman, the Los Angeles attorney who structured the deal, noting the city has been losing up to $4 million a year keeping the convention center doors open.
Billed as “Times Square West,” this 5.6-million-square-foot project encompasses six city blocks incorporating office, residential and retail. The project includes a JW Marriott Hotel and Ritz-Carlton Hotel & Residences; a Grammy Museum; radio and television broadcast studios, including ESPN's West Coast home; Nokia Theatre and 40,000-square-foot Nokia Plaza, which will serve as a gathering spot for the community to watch events from the Staples Center broadcast on giant LED screens. It is a joint venture of locally based Anschutz Entertainment Group, North Carolina-based Wachovia Corporation and the San Francisco-based MacFarlane Partners.
The Entertainment District has more than thirty residential projects, eight hotels and thirteen office buildings planned, all with ground-floor retail.
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