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| Rendering of Grand Avenue Los Angeles, County lacounty.gov |
A lovely good Wednesday afternoon to you and Yours Truly is here with you. The Candidate Forum is off until after Labor Day, when the 2020 election cycle goes into overdrive. In the meantime, just a friendly reminder from The Candidate Forum to register to vote and Text VOTE to 30330 to make a plan. Now then, shall we talk about a grand way Los Angeles can rise up from the COVID-19 pandemic?
Yesterday, we considered whether downtown can revive itself after the pandemic crisis. Since mid-March, downtown has been hollowed out, devoid of the bustling sidewalks and thriving businesses that gave it life. In short, downtown became a ghost town. The last time downtown emptied out was in the late fifties through the end of the sixties when businesses moved out of the area. In the late eighties, early nineties, downtown began to experience a revival powered by creative individuals looking for inexpensive places to live and work. Soon, businesses that cater to them--bars, restaurants, boutiques, and galleries--began to take over empty store fronts. By the early naughts, downtown was the place to be and continued to thrive. Then came the pandemic and everything was upended. Is there a way out?
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| Grand Avenue during COVID-19 nbclosangeles.com |
Since mid-March, Los Angeles has been turned upside down, inside out. Downtown Los Angeles has become a ghost town: "Parking attendants wave flags to the empty streets. Storefronts, boarded-up from break-ins, merge with stalled constructions sites. Homeless camps double as sidewalk bazaars" (latimes.com; Aug. 27, 2020; date accessed Sept. 2, 2020). Bicycle messenger Jimmy Lizama described the scene,
COVID...is a truth serum bringing it all out (Ibid)
For the past decade, downtown was an improbable boomtown, a stern rebuke to its history as the place where you went, did your business, and leave by 5:00 p.m. The high-rises and low-rises going up became home to nearly 88,000 residents and a 24/7 destination for visitors (Ibid).
Thomas Curwin writes,
Developers renovated the Arts Districts and raised apartment in South Park. City agencies gained traction with homeless population. Office vacancy rates fell, and from the 110 Freeway to the Los Angeles River, the city had a youthful, renegade, gastronomic vibe. After nearly a century, Los Angeles had a downtown that could rival other great American cities (Ibid)
Them people began to fall ill. Restaurants shuttered their doors, residents headed for other parts, and office workers, when they could, began working from home. All of a sudden it seemed like someone turned the clock back to 2008 and The Great Recession. Those that remained, like Mr. Lizama, were left to wonder if there was a way out?
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| Rendering of The Grand Frank Gehry la.curbed.com |
The way out of the mire may come in the form of a new development going up on Grand Avenue. The Grand, designed by Gehry Partners, has been in the works for past 20 years and now is finally being realized, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Grand, a forthcoming $1 billion mixed-use development taking shape in Downtown Los Angeles across from the Walt Disney Concert Hall (archinect.com; Aug. 31, 2020; date accessed Sept. 2, 2020).
Since mid-March Grand Avenue, between 1st and 3rd Streets, home to the Broad Museum, the Music Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Colburn School of Music has been empty of its regular travelers. The visitors, curators, musicians, and music students have been replaced by construction workers, practicing social distancing and wearing their masks, piecing together a development that may offer a way for Los Angeles to revive itself when the pandemic retreats into the shadows. The Grand, scheduled to be completed by the end of next year, is a monumental complex designed by Frank Gehry and will
...provide the urban foundation for a world-class, world-destination arts avenue. A mixed-use project, it will contain a hotel, housing (including affordable unit), shops, restaurants, movie theaters and public open spaces ( latimes.com; Aug. 25, 2020).
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| The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles moca.org |
If done correctly, The Grand has the potential make its namesake street Los Angeles' cultural epicenter in a city without a center, a place for all of L.A. "Done right, Grand Avenue become the Grand motivator, elevating a city's spirit and inspiring it to deal with pressing need" (Ibid). Done right also means building the concert hall complex the venerable Mr. Gehry designed to music school too. The Colburn School purchased a parking lot at 2nd and Olive Streets for the complex (Ibid). Mark Swed describes,
Gehry's proposal is a stunning crystalline glass structure that immediately catches the eye and holds a hall of about 1,000 seats for concerts, dance and opera. The building also would a smaller cabaret for experimental and late-night performances, plus dance studios and a restaurant (Ibid).
The majority of what takes place inside, specifically the studios, would be visible to passers by. When illuminated at night, it promises to be spectacular
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| 3-D map showing where the proposed Colburn Concert Hall would go The Colburn School latimes.com |
The proverbial cherry on top is a proposed plaza, also designed by Mr. Gehry, across the street where another parking lot stands. That site would feature
a state-of-the-art sound system for free outdoor concerts. A large wall at one end is designed for projections of selected event in the new venues, just like the famed Wallcast concerts that proved such a sensation at the New World Center, the concert hall and conservatory in Miami Beach that Gehry designed (Ibid).
Frank Gehry calls it "the foundation of the foundation of the Grand" (Ibid). It gives the surrounding area a sense of humanity. Mark Swed speculates "Were the block of 2nd Street between Olive and Grand to made pedestrian, we'd gain a grand connection with MOCA, the Broad, and Disney Hall" (Ibid).
Re-imagine the BP Hall--the space inside the Disney Concert Hall used for pre-show talks--and convert the under-used Keck Amphitheater into an enclosed jazz club as well as close off part of Grand Avenue to car traffic and you get an arts gathering place.
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| Walt Disney Concert Hall Frank Gehry laphil.com |
Think about it for a minute. Arts patrons spilling out onto Grand Avenue, at night, being treated to the Disney lit up like an abstract movie screen, showing the concert inside. How L.A. can you get? However, to make this tantalizing vision of the future come true. you need accessibility. That could come in the new Metro Regional Connector Project that will provide new station on Spring and Hope Streets. MOCA and the Broad are already free to the public, as will concerts on the plaza. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, already a world leader in diverse programming, can set the tone for Grand Avenue to be the arts epicenter that is truly representative of its city.
Like any center, it needs radii. The Metro Purple Line Extension, now under construction, will run west toward the newly redesigned Los Angeles County Museum of Art and point west along Wilshire Boulevard, all the way to UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance taking over the old Crest movie theater in Westwood. Perhaps the true beauty of the new Metro line is that it will connect to the Crenshaw Line, taking riders to the Inglewood home of the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles, where music lovers can see the talented musicians of the future.
As shiny and bright as the prospect of a real arts and culture center is, the question remains: Will people feel safe enough to gather in public spaces again? Concerts on the plaza and projections of concerts taking place indoors can be taken as an acknowledgement of the hesitancy to sit close together in an enclosed space but what about sitting close together in an outdoor space? Despite of all Mark Swed's enthusiasm for The Grand, he fails to address the fact that the pandemic scared a lot of people out of participating in public life. Fear of contracting this potentially deadly illness, which, yet, has no cure, reliable vaccine, or treatment, has made the public tentative about tempting fate. In states and cities where people have either been allowed to gather in public places and or tempted fate, have become COVID hotspots. Of course when The Grand is finally completed, it will include the safeguards necessary to prevent a super spreader event. Still, The Grand does hold out the possibility of being the place that helps make Los Angeles the kind of glamorous global destination it should be. Music to any civic booster's ears.
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