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While Los Angeles Plans Mega
Projects, Phoenix Plans Student Center
LOS
ANGELES (By Cara Mia DiMassa, LATimes Staff) December 13, 2006 — Los Angeles is
having a city-building moment. Two massive projects — the L.A. Live
entertainment complex next to Staples Center and the Grand Avenue development on
Bunker Hill — are underway. A third giant project, a major expansion of
Universal City, was unveiled last week. All adhere to a much-ballyhooed planning
strategy embraced by Los Angeles power brokers.
The projects, at a combined cost of about $7.5 billion, follow what has become
the big planning trend in Los Angeles and elsewhere: mixing dense housing,
retail and office space in village configurations near mass transit. The idea is
to foster "smart growth" — in which residents leave their cars behind, walk to
shops, and take buses and rail to work.
For Los Angeles, "this is the beginning. This will be the place where a model
gets created," said Gail Goldberg, the city's planning director. "This is very
different from past development in L.A. We have in the past seen sort of a
limitless amount of land. And I think that there were opportunities for sprawl
that don't exist anymore."
Goldberg and other planners suggest that the current projects demonstrate that
Los Angeles has learned from the drawbacks of past mega-developments.
In the 1960s and '70s, for example, city planners created a second downtown in
Century City — but they did so far from any freeways or mass transit, a legacy
that Westside commuters deal with daily.
But critics are more skeptical, saying that "smart growth" is only a euphemism
for more sprawl.
They worry that the sheer size of the projects — Grand Avenue's six skyscrapers,
Universal City's 2,900 homes, and L.A. Live's huge shopping and entertainment
venues — will overwhelm any small improvements made by increasing the number of
people who use mass transit.
That point was underscored in the environmental impact report for the Grand
Avenue project, which found that the development could significantly worsen
traffic in downtown — despite the fact that it would be built along the Red Line
subway.
"The landowner is always going to want to put as much as possible onto their
properties, and push off onto the public sector the costs for doing it," said
Rick Cole, city manager of Ventura and a longtime L.A. urban thinker, speaking
of large-scale projects in general. "The public ends up having to foot the
bill."
Los Angeles has long favored mega-developments, from the Century City and Warner
Center office developments in the 1970s to Playa Vista, a mixed-use housing,
retail and office community started in the 1990s on the Westside.
But as some of those developments age, their shortcomings have become apparent.
In Century City, there is now a push to build residential towers alongside the
office space, in the hopes of improving the balance.
Though the three projects have some central tenets in common, they approach the
idea of city-building in very different ways.
L.A. Live, the "sports-entertainment" hub, focuses on being a destination for
Angelenos and tourists alike. The project, which already is rising near Staples
Center, includes plans for a convention center and hotel, a 7,100-seat theater,
broadcast facilities, 14-screen movie theater, and nearly a dozen restaurants
and clubs. Luxury condominiums are also part of the mix, with completion of the
first phase expected next fall.
Grand Avenue is being touted as the much-needed heart for the city's center. The
three-phase project ultimately would include eight condo and office towers,
shopping arcades, a 16-acre park and a boutique hotel. The first phase, which
would be anchored by two towers designed by Frank Gehry, has received several
key official approvals and is expected to start construction next year.
The Universal plan would create an instant neighborhood on the site of the
studio's current back lot, with homes and apartment units and a north-south
street to serve residents. In addition, the studio's master plan calls for
restaurants, stores and a hotel nearby on NBC-Universal property. The plan goes
before officials next year.
Despite their differences, all are attempts to create "hubs" that combine denser
housing than Los Angeles is used to with shopping and offices near major rail
lines.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has hailed this type of development,
saying that it provides needed housing in the urban core while giving residents
an opportunity to use mass transit instead of cars.
Smaller, transit-oriented, mixed-use projects have popped up in recent years,
particularly around the Red and Gold lines. The Times visited one transit
village development in Hollywood after it was built in 2004 and found that
although residents liked living near a rail line, all the parking spaces in the
complex were taken and many residents still used their cars.
Land-use experts say the sheer size of L.A. Live, Grand Avenue and Universal
City mean that those projects ultimately will test whether smart growth can work
in Los Angeles.
UCLA planning professor Richard Weinstein said single projects alone would not
fundamentally alter Angelenos' shopping and commuting habits. But he said
worsening traffic has begun to affect where people decide to live.
The recent boom in upscale condos and lofts in downtown Los Angeles has been
driven partly by the desire of people to cut their commutes and live close to
work.
The question is whether the people who move into the three new developments are
willing to alter their lifestyles accordingly.
"It has much to do with changing people's perceptions of how they want to
travel," Weinstein said.
Urban planner Doug Suisman said that in Los Angeles, the challenge for
mega-projects and other mixed-use projects near transit corridors is how to
create density in a way that works for L.A.
"We are learning here how to do mixed use," Suisman said. "And even if people
have lots of experience in other parts of the world, it has to be applied
locally."
The stakes for Los Angeles are high.
Con Howe, the city's former longtime planning director, believes that Los
Angeles may never have another opportunity to shape its urban fabric as it has
now with the three mega-developments.
The influence of those projects will extend far beyond their borders, because
mega-developments often influence the kind of growth in surrounding
neighborhoods, he said.
"There are some major projects that because of their scale or their impact
become a generative force, or a regenerative force," said Howe, who heads the
Urban Land Institute's Center for Balanced Development in the West.
L.A. Live already has sparked a significant number of residential projects in
the South Park neighborhood around it, with developers trusting that the center
will be such a draw that people will want to live nearby.
L.A. Live offers "a vibrancy that you can't get in other parts of the city,"
said Greg Vilkin of Forest City, a developer who recently built the upscale
rental Met Lofts there. It will be "like living two blocks off of Times Square."
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