Broadway is coming back....slowly but surely (Los Angeles, Santa Ana: rent, home)

[pwright1]

That is great news. Finally the hole will be gone. Also the new park thats coming between City Hall and the Music Center is looking really nice.

[SalParadise]

Smaller-scale but a Famima is opening on Broadway in the ground floor of the Broadway-Spring Acrade Building.

And Royal Clatyon's English Pub will open in the same building on the Spring Street side.

[SalParadise]

LA Times article on the renovation of the United Artists Theatre into a boutiqe hotel.

Downtown L.A. theater and office building to be turned into hotel - latimes.com

[A1Lexo]

Revitalizing old cultural centers is great, though it rarely happens. what usually happens is commercialization and a sort of theme parking of the area. People come in and live out the fantasy of being in a city and actual culture moves elsewhere. I know I'm being simplistic and reductive but revitalizing an area should be to preserve and support the existing culture, not gentrify it.

[nslander]

Originally Posted by A1Lexo

Revitalizing old cultural centers is great, though it rarely happens. what usually happens is commercialization and a sort of theme parking of the area. People come in and live out the fantasy of being in a city and actual culture moves elsewhere. I know I'm being simplistic and reductive but revitalizing an area should be to preserve and support the existing culture, not gentrify it.

In theory, sure. But I'm curious: have you visited downtown LA 5 or more years ago, and also recently? I'll go out on a limb and generalize that the bulk of the existing and brick mortar economic culture welcomes "gentrification" with open arms. And rather than providing a mere urban adventure, people are actually moving downtown, as it has shown considerable net population increase.

As another poster so eloquently stated previously, much of Broadway's recent (legal) economic activity has been typified by the selling of tube-socks and underwear. And even those flea-market transactions don't necessarily involve people living in the immediate area either. A broader examination of of DTLA reveals a much more brutal history of dislocating people than the mere gentrification. Historically, this is progress.

Homelessness is another subject. We must address how we treat mentally ill citizens.

[SalParadise]

Originally Posted by nslander

As another poster so eloquently stated previously, much of Broadway's recent (legal) economic activity has been typified by the selling of tube-socks and underwear. And even those flea-market transactions don't necessarily involve people living in the immediate area either. A broader examination of of DTLA reveals a much more brutal history of dislocating people than the mere gentrification. Historically, this is progress.

.

Yes, and the current "culture" at 5th and Broadway is the dealing of black market pills, as noted in this recent article in the downtown news.

Fifth and Broadway

[SalParadise]

Originally Posted by A1Lexo

Revitalizing old cultural centers is great, though it rarely happens. what usually happens is commercialization and a sort of theme parking of the area. People come in and live out the fantasy of being in a city and actual culture moves elsewhere. I know I'm being simplistic and reductive but revitalizing an area should be to preserve and support the existing culture, not gentrify it.

The only fantasies being played out on Broadway right now is drug pushers and the mentally ill homeless with schizophrenia.

The "culture" of broadway vanished a long time ago. In the 1920's, it was the epicenter of LA's retail and nightlife. Despite losing favor to places like Wilshire Blvd and the Westside in the 1950's, Broadway still retained enough of a nightlife in the '50's and '60's with Spanish language cinema keeping the street alive at night.

From about the 1970's through 2012, the street has been MOSTLY DEAD at NIGHT. There are virtually NO Spanish Language cinemas left in LA anymore. None on Broadway for decades. Nothing but drug pushers and the homeless. Monuments to LA's past have have been mostly vacant during this time. And even a few buildings were set on fire during the 1992 riots.

In the early 2000's the area on Broadway between 8th and 9th began to see SOME life with the historic ORPHEUM Theater reopening in 2002 and the Broadway Bar coming in 2005. The Orpheum has live performances (concerts, comedians, TV shows, etc). How's that for culture? The Broadway Bar brings SOME people to the area at night. But the street is still mostly dead at night.

The recent developments will continue to bring life back to the street and put the "lights" back on so to speak. As dead, zombie buildings begin to breathe a fresh breath on a long neglected piece of LA's history.

[A1Lexo]

Here's an example. On and off in my life I have lived in Echo Park. I remember the intersection of Scott and Glendale being dangerous and in bad need of a stop light. Well now there is a stop light there. Why not before? Why can't a community be invested in until well off white people decide they want to be there?

I have been to Broadway plenty of times, lived in DTLA when I was 15, witnessed may of the problems, but this attitude about gentrification is missing so much. WE should not have to price out hard working families and create money booms for developers and landlords to improve an area. We all pay taxes.

[DynamoLA]

Originally Posted by A1Lexo

Here's an example. On and off in my life I have lived in Echo Park. I remember the intersection of Scott and Glendale being dangerous and in bad need of a stop light. Well now there is a stop light there. Why not before? Why can't a community be invested in until well off white people decide they want to be there?

I have been to Broadway plenty of times, lived in DTLA when I was 15, witnessed may of the problems, but this attitude about gentrification is missing so much. WE should not have to price out hard working families and create money booms for developers and landlords to improve an area. We all pay taxes.

"We" don't price anyone out. The market does. More desireable area = more expensive. I'm not sure why you are unclear about how the market works.

And I would LOVE just one shred of proof that a stoplight was only put in because "well off white people" wanted one.

Lots of stoplights have gone up all over the city because of an increase in traffic.

[nslander]

Originally Posted by A1Lexo

Here's an example. On and off in my life I have lived in Echo Park. I remember the intersection of Scott and Glendale being dangerous and in bad need of a stop light. Well now there is a stop light there. Why not before? Why can't a community be invested in until well off white people decide they want to be there?

I have been to Broadway plenty of times, lived in DTLA when I was 15, witnessed may of the problems, but this attitude about gentrification is missing so much. WE should not have to price out hard working families and create money booms for developers and landlords to improve an area. We all pay taxes.

Stop lights often take forever to get installed. We and our neighbors begged the city for a simple stop sign at our local intersection in relatively affluent Huntington Beach for years before one was finally put up. I get your appeal to economic justice, especially w/r/t to services funded by taxes, but not every single public sector outcome is determined entirely by local wealth.

The net increase in DT population shows not that many people had lived there previously, and relatively few of them have been "hard working families". This is not to say "none"; but most lived and continue to live in areas around downtown. More importantly, many of the newer business are operating in buildings that had been entirely vacant. I cannot see how that is a bad thing.