“broadway west?”: the wsj weighs in
This blog has moved to Twitter! Check out my twitter feed for the latest restaurant, retail, and cultural news in the neighborhood.
Though I’m a little reluctant to post about articles in national media, I couldn’t pass up the Wall Street Journal’s piece on our fair Broadway.
After previous failed attempts to restore Broadway’s nightlife, a new initiative by developers, preservationists and policy makers is gaining impetus because of two multibillion-dollar projects at both ends of the business district: the L.A. Live sports and entertainment complex in the south and the Grand Ave. residential, hotel and shopping plan in the north. Broadway is envisioned as a thriving theater corridor, with bistros, bars and new stores, linking the two megadevelopments.
I’ve read in multiple sources now that the plan is for Broadway to link Grand Avenue to LA Live. The first time I just brushed it off as a fluke, a lack of familiarity with local geography.
But if this is going to be a commonly used phrase (“Times Square of the West,” anyone?) we have to set the record straight: Not only is Broadway too far north and east to capture the LA Live-to-Grand Avenue Project pedestrian traffic, but the Broadway Corridor is so massive and has such a large amount of historic architecture that it will be a draw in its own right.
The potential for a true pedestrian-friendly network of shops, housing, restaurants, entertainment and culture on Broadway is more significant than at LA Live or Grand Avenue. Both are great projects that serve their own purpose, but they can’t compete with the three-dimensional possibility of being able to have dinner on Main, catching a show on Broadway, and then having drinks in a bar on Spring afterward.
In all, there isn’t much groundbreaking news in the story — at least for Downtowners who happen to keep track of all of the happenings here — except for a nice little blurb about plans for the State Theatre:
Another Delijani property, the State Theater, once featured performances by Judy Garland. Now it is leased by an evangelical church. In addition to restoring the venue, there is “some discussion” about developing the upper floors as a boutique hotel,” says Ms. Jones, the consultant.
I can’t even begin to express how great a boutique hotel on Broadway would be — in one of the larger, more magnificent Broadway venues, no less.
That’s half of my homework completed.
4 comments
I’ve walked past The State several times lately; I’ve witnessed all kinds of pedestrian buzz activity associated with the church. They seem to do “to go” blessings by doing it right under the signage and letting them go on their way.
That said, I totally agree with your opinion that Broadway is too far removed to be the ‘connector’ between the two projects. Out-of-towner journalists doing a story on Broadway see the two projects + the renewed activity on Broadway and do no research to solidify the natural inclination to link them all together. I think a lot of civic boosters do little to dissuade that line of thought too.
I truly love the entirely different feel I get on each individual street. Broadway will be able to stand on its own!
The whole idea behind broadway being a connection is by way of the downtown LA streetcar project which will go from grand ave down 1st to broadway, down to olympic, into LA Live
^^^This is what I gathered at the downtown neighborhood council meeting last week
I hope that in the process of restoring Broadway, the many still-intact neon marquees of the 40’s don’t get chucked in favor of the “original” style martquees of the 20’s. Lots of cities think that restoration always has to mean ridding buildings of their colorful and lively neon from mid-century. Seems to me from what has happened thus far, that LA intends to restore the existing neon on the theatres (I hope that continues). The State’s marquee is unlike any other I have seen and I hope it’s restored just as it is (perhaps with it’s former, slightly cooler color scheme).