LA Times Times reports Mayor sets out to transform targeted L.A. Streets into Walkable Streets.
This LA Times Story (July 27, 2014, front page) reports that Mayor Eric Garcetti hopes to transform 14 major thoroughfares into hubs of neighborhood activity. In a process the mayor describes as “urban acupuncture,” the city plans to add bike racks, plazas, crosswalk upgrades and other amenities aimed at drawing in pedestrians and attracting new businesses.
Why is this important? Today, more people desire to live walking distance to amenities, especially restaurants, bars, and shops. Previously, Angelenos demanded infinite amenities within an easy commute,not walkability. Now the trend is also for walkable amenities. This trend toward neighborhood workability has led to the recent increased popularity of Venice, Downtown Santa Monica, Downtown Los Angeles, and Silverlake. In Highland Park, once sleepy York Boulevard has become a magnet for an array of middle- and upper-middle class needs: coffee, comic books, vegan ice cream, and $5 donuts. Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, once favored mainly by locals, is now a regional tourist destination with prices to rival Rodeo Drive. Walkable streets are now a major amenity attracting renters and home buyers.
So what comes first, retail amenities or residential. It is hard to say. Maybe it is a little of both. In Los Angeles, major employment centers must be within easy commute to a potential area in gentrification. Prices and rents very close to these employment centers are very high. So people seek more affordable areas. Someone takes a chance and opens a restaurant that takes off and attracts the gentrified demographic. A house renovator takes note and tries a renovation that succeeds. Other renovators take note and follow. Other retailers take note and follow. And so goes the chain reaction that plays out over years and even decades.
Now, Garcetti said he is trying to create conditions favorable to a transformation by targeting locations that already have sparks of new economic activity (retailers or housing renovation). He’s quick to point to success stories in the council district he represented before becoming mayor.
In Silver Lake, he closed one block adjacent to the Sunset Boulevard business district to car traffic, replacing it with a pedestrian plaza painted with green polka dots (Silverlake Triangle Plaza). In Atwater Village, Garcetti worked to make Glendale Boulevard — a major route to the 5 Freeway — more welcoming to pedestrians. City crews upgraded crosswalks, extending curbs farther into the street, and added new trees, signs and trash cans.
Now, on the Westside, Garcetti picked four blocks of Westwood Boulevard anchored by the Geffen Playhouse on one end and by UCLA’s Hammer Museum on the other. In Mar Vista, Garcetti picked Venice Boulevard between Beethoven and Inglewood Boulevard. On Figueroa Street in Highland Park, another corridor (between Avenue 50 and Avenue 60) selected by Garcetti, check-cashing businesses and pupuserias have been joined by workout places, a record shop, a vintage clothing store and Kitchen Mouse, a storefront restaurant that promises vegan and gluten-free dining options. Customer Elizabeth Brizzi said the area is starting to have the “Silver Lake feel” — a reference to the hip neighborhood once represented by Garcetti.
Mayor sets out to transform L.A. streets through ‘urban acupuncture’ – LA Times.
The Downtown Art District retail will start to pick up steam. Currently, the Art District has 3 hot restaurants (Bestia, Factory Kitchen, and Church and State) ;an Urth Cafe; and four coffee houses (Slumptown, Handsome, Verve, Novel, and Daily Dose). Now two projects will add 165,000 square feet of new retail.
Finally, the retail is filling in the Art District to provide an exciting experience for those who work and live in the area.
More and more new apartments are eliminating the dining room.. Many Millennials eat out, at their desk, on a coffee table (and in front of a video screen) , or at a eating bar and (in front of a video screen). Jerome Synder’s new two luxury highrise apartment towers, the Vermont, at Wilshire and Vermont,do not offer residents a dining room.
No Dining Room in the Wilshire Vermont One Bedroom.
Instead, the dining room is replaced with an eating bar in the kitchen.
We just gave birth to a full creative apartment unit renovation at our new project at 1306 Temple Street in Echo Park. At 580 square feet, the one bedroom unit has full deconstructed open wood ceilings. We stripped off the drywall ceiling of a 1920 apartment unit and left the wood lumber exposed. To accomplish this, we installed new finished doug fir plywood just above the existing wood ceiling frame. The result was to create a loft look in only 580 square feet. Due to City laws, most one bedroom loft like apartment units (with wood ceilings) in Los Angeles are much larger. Creating this unit may seem easy, but it was very difficult because it had never been done before.
A number of dubious team members worried the city fire codes would not allow an open ceiling, or it could not be framed. Eighteen years ago, we faced a similar challenge. We proposed to strip the acoustic tile from an existing 1000 square foot office suite and create an open wood ceiling with rigid ducting and skylights. In other words, we wanted to create a creative office in a conventional 3 story office building.
. No one had done this before in Los Angeles. The first prospect loved the space but asked when the ceiling was going in. Shortly, we had multiple offers for the space. Again, the first one was hard, but the rest is history.
Below is how the 1920 apartment unit, with drywall ceilings, looked before our renovation..
Below is the unit after renovation: a loft looking creative apartment unit with the new deconstructed open wood ceilings.
Congrats to our project designer/manager, Adaptive Realty, our consulting engineer/architect Gwynne Pugh Urban Studios, and our PMI team.