Quote:
Originally Posted by Kingofthehill
She hated Broadway (which, judging from my recent trips to NYC, "outgrits" NYC, lol), but loved the pedestrian activity on Spring, as well as the new restaurants in/around the Arts District.
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your friend's reaction pretty much duplicates my own response & that of my daughter, not to mention the non local relatives with us at the time, when we drove down broadway awhile ago. I at first expected----& was hoping----the street would be full of vacant storefronts. I wanted to point out to everyone that the street had lots of potential.....that it was like a blank canvas ready to be painted on. so when I instead saw block after block of grimy swapmeets, all still in business, I was truly disappointed.
broadway is one of the few streets in all of dt that I think would look better or show promise of a brighter future if most of its bldgs, or certainly the first floor spaces of those bldgs, were vacant.
I was in the hood yesterday & the one thing that never fails to hit me is how much of DT still needs lots of TLC. I think when many of us are talking about dtla like it's a lab monkey in a science experiment, we get so much into the small details that we forget the fundamentals. iow, when I'm actually in DT, I find it impossible to get worked up about matters like parking podiums on highrise condo bldgs, or new bldgs being too short, or malls being too burban, or bldgs not being architecturally fantastic enough, or projs not being geared to transit, when there still is a lot of grime & too many gaps & deadzones throughout the hood.
as for the good: LA live was a bit lively & it was nice to see ppl out around the skating rink. there is a restaurant on the north side, on olympic, that even though it can't been seen from the central court, seems to always have the most customers, at least when I'm there. TG that LA live no longer is the huge parking lot of not too many yrs ago.
Lots of the apts in that greenish tint tower with the fugly parking base next to Ralphs appeared to be lit up, so it looks like its mostly occupied. I just realize I failed to see what the concerto tower was like at night, although the shorter bldg that sits along flower st had many of its windows lit up, so that helps give the hood a feeling of being lived in.
I noticed a new lighting effect added to the fountains of the water & power bldg, presumably for the holidays....the water was changing in colors, including red & green.
farther east, Pershing Sq looked nicely decorated with lights for the holidays. Congrats to the parks & rec dept, or whatever other city dept, for making that happen. by contrast, the fenced off area around city hall looked sad, but the fact the fugly parking lot that once was west of city hall is now being turned into a park helps make up for things.
as for the clark hotel on hill st, if I were a casual visitor passing by without any info on that old bldg, I'd never think it was being prepped for a makeover & reopening. The ground floor area of the bldg still looks abandoned, & I can't figure out why the owners are taking so long to fix up that most visible part of their bldg.
many sections of dt seemed a bit too quiet for a weekday evening. That's the one thing that has also stood out to me when visiting the hood during a weekend. But I assumed there'd be a greater sense of ppl out & about during a weekday. So wkday or weekend, I rarely come away from dtla without a feeling that lots & lots more new housing has to be added to the hood asap.
all in all, I think dt is better today than it was many yrs ago, & perhaps is better today in certain ways than it was over 70 yrs ago.
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still has to be dealt with in the hood.
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