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A Review of the Los Angeles Conservancy Broadway Initiative Action Plan
February 22, 2001
A Review of the Los Angeles Conservancy
Broadway Initiative Action Plan
ULI - the Urban Land Institute Los Angeles District Council
A Local Advisory Services Panel Report
Introduction
The Broadway Historic District in downtown Los Angeles, the center of the historic core in Los Angeles, was once the entertainment and retail hub of the city. Broadway Street between 3rd and 9th Streets contains 12 major movie palaces with a seating capacity of over 17,000, and is the first and largest Historic Theater District listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The core area, which encompasses the adjacent Spring Street, contains approximately 250 acres and over 180 historic buildings.
Over the last several decades, the economic fortunes of Broadway have fallen as major new office development and downtown employers and retailers have moved out of the historic core area. In their place, an active and successful street level retail environment has developed that serves the local Hispanic market. However, much of the several million square feet of office space above street level in existing old office buildings remains vacant.
In July 1999, the Los Angeles Conservancy prepared the Broadway Initiative Action Plan. The Action Plan represents the Conservancy’s launch of a comprehensive, multi-year strategy to revitalize the Broadway Historic Theater District. This Plan envisions an exciting future for Broadway that builds on the active retail environment with a more diverse mix of retail uses, theater entertainment uses, and conversion of vacant commercial buildings into residential and other mixed uses to create a 24-hour community in the Historic Core.
The Conservancy asked ULI - the Urban Land Institute Los Angeles District Council (ULI LA) to convene a Local Advisory Panel to respond to eight questions related to the Action Plan. The questions were purposefully broad, since the Conservancy wished to receive the Panel’s overall thoughts and reactions to all major elements of the Action Plan. The Conservancy’s questions are listed on the following page.
ULI LA assembled six Los Angeles professionals with expertise in development, finance, architecture, design, and urban planning, market and feasibility economics, and public sector issues. The Panel members reviewed a briefing book assembled by the Conservancy, which included the Action Plan, area photos, data on the property scale of Broadway and the theaters, information on available incentives for preserving historic buildings, and excerpts from past studies conducted on the Broadway retail market and the entertainment district.
The Panel met in the morning of May 20, 2000, and walked parts of Broadway and Spring Streets with Conservancy representatives. The Panel then convened and was briefed on the Action Plan by members of the Conservancy. The Panel recorded its initial observations on the realistic opportunities and constraints facing the Conservancy under the Action Plan, and responded with recommendations for the implementation of its vision for Broadway and the Historic Core.
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