I'm glad there are lists of proposed new projs for the hood, & that they're kept up to date. But because of projs like Concerto, which has come to a standstill even after ground was broken, or the Medallion, which so far has missed several announced start up dates, I find myself not looking too closely at any proposal unless I'm sure it's a done deal.
What I do like to keep a close eye on are things like what the person from Forest City says about her co's projs in LA, which includes the met lofts & metro417. If most devlprs can make a similar claim----about their projs in LA being greeted with success----then proposed new bldgs like FIDM's tower, or Park fifth, or many of the other projs on colemonkee's or anyone else's list, are more likely to become reality. And that's when I start taking them seriously & wanna get into the details, such as what they'll look like, or how tall they'll be, or whether they'll have ground floor stores or not.
Urban Pioneers Need New Places to Explore
Cities must look beyond first wave of residents to attract more people to redeveloping cores
By KEELEY WEBSTER
CREJ Staff Writer
APRIL 30, 2007
As far back as most Angelenos can remember, downtown Los Angeles has been a business center, not a place that people lived. Many forget, however, that downtown Los Angeles had vibrant residential neighborhoods and was the center of the city's nightlife prior to World War II. After the war, the soldiers started families and embraced the hope of single-family homeownership that the region's freeway system made possible. As a result, the suburbanization of Los Angeles took off and downtown became a mostly nine-to-five environment, mirroring a long-term national trend that hollowed out downtown residential populations.
That trend is reversing itself today as two-thirds of the nation's largest and most underdeveloped downtowns have growing residential populations of urban pioneers as reflected in the downtown redevelopment in San Diego, Sacramento and Los Angeles. Once again, the demand for a better quality of life has pushed the pendulum of residential demand from "drivable suburbanism" to "walkable urbanity," according to Christopher B. Leinberger, a metropolitan land strategist, developer and visiting fellow at The Brookings Institution. "This is, to some extent, a sort of 'back to the future' future," he said.
Leinberger, who spoke earlier this month at the Benjamin S. Crocker Symposium on Real Estate Law and Business 2007, estimated that the need for more sustainable environments, changing demographics, new cultural dynamics and infrastructure limitations will lead to the creation of more than 50 walkable urban centers in the Los Angeles Basin, each reminiscent of the historic downtown environment.
"I personally think that one day people are going to wake up and realize that [downtown Los Angeles] is one of the great downtowns in the country," he said.
For some that day is now. Downtown's residential population has added 10,000 residents since 1998, according to Hal Bastian, vice president and director of economic development for the Downtown Center Business Improvement District. That population will grow significantly as more than 7,000 new residential units under construction are delivered. "Sprawl has hit the wall in Los Angeles and God stopped making land in Los Angeles," Bastian said. "The only place development is embraced is in downtown Los Angeles."
Despite billions in new investment and development, observers remain divided on the future of downtown markets. Also, as the national housing market drops, some question whether the downtown resurgence also will slow. So far the changing housing market hasn't scared away developers like Forest City Residential West Inc., which is attracted to the changing downtown demographics.
Renata Simril, vice president of development for Forest City, said the developer has three rental projects and two condominium projects in downtown Los Angeles that are
all fully occupied. "We are still very bullish on downtown," she said.
What Color Is Your Collar?
The trend of downtown revitalization, which is delivering thousands of new high-end residential units in Los Angeles, was preceded by a very different demographic. In the 1980s a wave of artists formed the Arts District in abandoned downtown industrial buildings, giving the area a decidedly paint-splattered-collar appeal.
When artist Andre Miripolsky looked at moving to the Arts District 12 years ago, he chose The Brewery in Lincoln Heights over the official Artists District. He chose to live near but not in the middle of the action because of downtown's reputation. "After 5 p.m. it was dead. There were no amenities there," Miripolsky said. "It's the idea of having a Volvo or Mercedes parked next to Skid Row."
This trend took an evolutionary leap forward in 1999 when the city of Los Angeles adopted its adaptive-reuse ordinance and experienced private and institutional developers began to convert obsolete commercial buildings into highly amenitized rentals and condominiums. That development attracted a more affluent urban pioneer to live within blocks of Los Angeles' Skid Row, and priced out the artists.
"A lot of artists have left downtown because the prices are going up and the real artists' lofts with 25-foot ceilings are being converted to loft apartments and condominiums with 12-foot ceilings," Miripolsky said.
The transition of a portion of downtown from artists to white-collar workers is a classic trend in downtowns nationwide, Miripolsky said. He compared it to New York City's SoHo artists being forced to move to Brooklyn when that Arts District became a hip place to live. In San Francisco, hipsters organized themselves during the height of the high-tech boom when gentrification brought Silicon Valley's suddenly wealthy into the city's established neighborhoods.
"Many locals have been priced out of town, clearing the way for a new breed of educated, overpaid rednecks - Reagan's evil spawn to be sure," wrote Upper Haight resident John Goett in the late 1990s in a blog published at
www.ratso.net. "And as San Francisco morphed from an industrial shipping center to a Disney-like tourist trap, its charm diversity and history are being erased in front of our eyes."
The effects of this residential transition still resonate in San Francisco. With some of the most expensive housing in the state, San Francisco is one of the few California cities whose population has remained relatively flat. U.S. Census figures for San Francisco in 2005 put the median household income at $57,496, the median age at 40, with just 136,800 of the city's 719,077 residents children.
By comparison, a February 2007 survey of downtown residents conducted by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. found that the median age of downtown residents surveyed is 31 years old and that 72.7 percent of the residents have no children in the home. The number of households with children in the two markets may not be dramatically different, but the perception is. The LAEDC survey showed that
nearly half of downtown's residents planned to move out within five years to raise a family.
"The key is that downtown is not friendly to children," said Jack Kyser, the LAEDC's senior vice president and chief economist. "When the child reaches school age, 48 percent said they would move out of downtown due to a lack of good-quality schools."
So who will take the the young professionals and empty nesters' spots in downtowns if or when they leave?
Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district covers much of downtown, conducts downtown tours and attends the frequent open houses. She said that she is seeing people 35, 40 and older looking for homes. "I was moved by the diversity of people who came down here, not just ethnically, but the age diversity," Perry said.
That represents a shift as the LAEDC survey found that 6.8 percent of the respondents are between 55 and 64 and 1.2 percent are 65 or older.
A similar group of urban pioneers has moved to downtown San Diego. "There is a sizable number of young professionals, usually without children, who are moving downtown," said Robin Maydeck, a resident of downtown San Diego. "There are a lot of baby boomers like me downtown, as well as very vital retirees, many second homeowners and seniors on a fixed income."
Building 24/7 Appeal
Perry has faith that the changes occurring in both the retail landscape and several new schools under construction will help keep more people in downtown. For example, a Ralphs grocery - downtown's first full-service supermarket in 50 years - is scheduled to open this summer, and the Downtown Center BID is soliciting a restaurant row, she said. These are important amenities necessary to support a vibrant residential community.
However, these amenities need full-time patrons. What Joel Kotkin, author and urban historian, characterized as part-time or temporary residents cannot make up the bulk of the population or retail will never thrive and downtown Los Angeles will never be a 24-hour city. "My sense is that a lot of University of Southern California students live there," Kotkin said. "I taught at [the Southern California Institute of Architecture] located in the Artists District. Every single student I taught, who lived downtown, didn't intend to stay."
Combine that with the part-time empty-nester residents, like the attorney who works in Los Angeles two or three days a week and has a downtown condominium, but a house in Palm Springs.
That attorney will not be here on the weekend to support the retail, Kotkin said. Nor will the area's new high-profile residents like David and Victoria Beckham, who live in the Biscuit Co. Lofts.
In places like Irvine where a downtown is rising where none existed before, developers are catering to the affluent to populate a live-work-play environment. Los Angeles is doing the same thing with L.A. Live and the Grand Avenue project, in addition to independent condominium developments. "The problem with downtown Los Angeles is that it's
not near the beautiful parts of Los Angeles, the beach," Kotkin said. "I can get buying a condo in San Diego, because you can walk to the ocean or get an ocean view."
The difference for San Francisco is that developers are not adding product to an untested market, Kotkin said. Unlike Los Angeles, San Francisco also has the BART system enabling Bay Area residents to travel throughout the region without getting in their cars. It will be at least a decade before Los Angeles has completed work on the light-rail system.
Even being ahead of the curve on transit and density, San Franciscans face the same problems with the lack of retail amenities.
"As a resident of Haight-Ashbury, I have my choice of 2,000 styles of shoes and 500 blends of coffee, yet I can't get a prescription filled and I can't do business with a bank teller. I can't even get a doggone Xerox copy," Goett wrote in the blog.
Real estate watchers may be on the fence about the staying power of downtown Los Angeles' urban pioneers, but no one can deny that California cities are reinventing their cores. "If you look at downtown San Francisco, it has always had a mix of business and residential," Kyser said. "If you go to Sacramento, the downtown fell on hard times and they are trying to reintroduce residential. When San Diego fell on hard times, the city developed the Gaslamp district."
With all the growth planned in redeveloping urban cores, like downtown Los Angeles, it will be years before the urban lifestyle emerges. "I just don't get it," Kotkin said. "Even if it all gets built, it will be a construction site for the next 10 years - it will be very unpleasant. Maybe in 15 years, it will emerge, but I just don't see the market."
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