By Matthew Kredell
Los Angeles City Council member Jose Huizar described the developments going on in downtown L.A. as building a city within a city during an Oct. 7 discussion with students at the USC Price School of Public Policy.
Huizar was the featured speaker in USC Price’s weekly Urban Growth Seminar series, which brings in top practitioners and leading researchers to speak about innovative responses to complex urban issues. He laid out his plans to continue the revitalization of downtown and discussed the challenges he faces as chair of the city’s planning and land use management committee.
“I believe that any great city needs a great downtown,” Huizar said. “If you look at the downtown we have in L.A., not too long ago come 5 o’clock the light switch would be turned off and it was pretty desolate. That has been changed. It started with L.A. Live and Staples Center, and now you see a domino effect happening through the rest of downtown where there’s revitalization and new development going on.”
Huizar, whose district encompasses most of downtown, noted that there is $12 billion in private development currently underway in the area, as well as underground subway construction to extend the metro rail system. The most exciting of those projects is the Grand Wilshire Center, a luxury hotel that will be the tallest building west of the Mississippi.
Among Huizar’s areas of focus are an initiative to revitalize the historic Broadway Theater District, a campaign to bring back the Downtown Los Angeles Streetcar and a re-envisioning of Pershing Square.
He created Bringing Back Broadway in 2008 as a 10-year plan. Broadway has a lot of potential with its beautiful architecture, but while most spaces on the street level are being put to use, there are about a million square feet of available space on upper floors. Huizar’s street-scape plan would take out one lane of traffic, extend the sidewalks, and put up trees and street furniture.
“Our goal is to make pedestrian use on Broadway just as important as car use,” Huizar said. “I think when people see our vision of creating a plaza-type environment with thousands of people walking around, sitting down, enjoying something to eat or a cup of coffee, they are really going to enjoy it.”
Huizar regards the rebirth of a streetcar in downtown as a way to provide better connectivity between different neighborhoods, inspire nostalgia and tourism, and spur economic development. A study showed that a streetcar would generate an additional $1.6 billion in investment to the downtown area.
Property owners within a three-block radius of the planned streetcar route taxed themselves to raise $60 million in construction funding, wanting to invest in a fixed asset that brings people to them. It’s an example of how Huizar sees the public sector leveraging private-sector investment for public improvements, making up for the lack of permanent revenue sources for public infrastructure.
“For someone who lives near downtown and works downtown, it’s great to know that there’s passionate leadership in the council office and continued collaboration on the public and private sector sides,” said Karl Fielding, a second-year master of planning student at USC Price.
Ten years ago, there were around 10,000 people who lived downtown. Today, that number is about 50,000 and growing. That increase has created a need for public amenities such as parks. Huizar wants Pershing Square to have fewer concrete walls and more green space to better integrate with local surroundings.
Addressing the issue of homelessness, Huizar called for more permanent supportive housing on a decentralized basis, cleaning skid row streets and going to where the homeless people are to offer social services.
Professor and Senior Associate Dean Marlon Boarnet, who oversees the series as director of graduate programs at USC Price, concluded, “It was a wonderful opportunity for the students to get the chance to listen to an elected official who is immersed in the planning questions instrumental to the transformation of downtown.”