A Great Downtown La Vibe

A Great Downtown La Vibe

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Right on top of what used to be LA's Skid Row, a massive multi-use development combines office and retail space, residential units, and entertainment venues under one gigantic roof. Called LA Live, it is the jewel in the crown of the New LA.

Los Angeles is home to one of Americas most dramatic stories of urban renewal. It began in one of the country's most dangerous and dilapidated urban cores, rife with crime and full of the homeless, which had become a sort of dumping ground for the rest of the metropolitan area. From that beginning, a new Downtown was born, which is now a dynamic cultural center, a bustling business zone, and a desirable residential address. LA Live is the climactic chapter to that story.

In the 1990s, when the economy was booming and China was beginning to emerge as a trading partner, the stars aligned to give downtown Los Angeles a makeover. Way back in the city's storied past, downtown LA was a cultural mecca, and the relics of that age still stood. Elegant old hotels. Ornate theatres. Architecturally inspiring old buildings.

But drugs hit Los Angeles especially hard during the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. The use of them destroyed countless lives, as it did everywhere. But being a major population center - and one with a hefty appetite for narcotics - so close to the US-Mexico border placed Los Angeles in a different kind of peril as well. It became a hub on the cocaine highway.

The LA gang problem of the 1980s has become the stuff of legend. Los Angeles wrote the preface to a story that has unfolded in every other American urban center, and it wrote it with alarming violence and drama. During that period, money in Los Angeles quite literally ran for the coast and the hills. Downtown, sandwiched between Chinatown, Central LA, and a great swath of industry to the East, fell into decay.

It took a great deal of risk and the strong will to sell that risk to bring Downtown LA back from the brink. It took an overhaul of the LAPD, bold political moves, ambitious capitalists, generous philanthropists, and the economic climate created by a Dot.Com boom and a housing bubble. Without any of these, it would not have happened.

Gradually, however, it did happen. In places where the storefronts had stood vacant for decades, retail establishments began to flourish. Restaurants opened. Nightclubs and coffee shops joined them. Buildings whose grand old facades had hidden hollow insides were converted into high end condominiums.

Ultimately, the Downtown Renaissance culminated in LA Live. It cost approximately $2.5 billion. Its searchlights crisscross the sky at night. Its mall holds world-class shops, and its stages feature world-class talent. It is a testament to the will of those who saw opportunity in an urban core in ruin, since a few short years before ground was broken a development of this magnitude would have been unthinkable here.

About the Author:
I'm a freelance writer with a passion for writing about Gladstones restaurant. You may also be interested in reading more about SBE



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