Density Dogma (Part 2)

Please see Density Dogma Part 1 (12/14/2009)

Only density, charge the growth shills, can forge the new mecca: vibrant, walkable communities, like immoderately wealthy land islands Manhattan and San Francisco.  Density dendrites, linking decentralized purlieus, offer salvation, sustainability, more bakeries, a trattoria.

But what of Maywood then, I ask, to a sea of blank faces.  Maywood: California's most densely populated city.  More densely populated than Santa Monica, San Jose, or San Francisco.  Have the residents of Maywood forsaken the combustion engine, biking to nearby jobs, past corner close farmer's markets and keen shops, enkindled by vitalizing street life?

Nope.  

Are basic services, life's little necessities, nicely arrayed along the main drag, East Slauson?

Necessities perhaps, but little else, and many storefronts appear lifeless or relegated to automobile uses.  Recreational opportunities, meanwhile, are nearly non-existent for Maywood's 40,000 residents, limited to a pocket park and a thin strip of L.A. River badlands. Maywood hasn't a movie theatre, or performance space, gym, toy store, libreria, cookwares shop, art supply source, or athletic fields.  

The ideal urban construct, apparently, requires a bit more than up-zoning. 

Gold Line Eastside

The city's latest addition to a burgeoning rail system, the Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension (or La Linea De Oro, Edward R. Royball), debuted November 15th, at an oft-reported cost of $898 million.  

The oddly-named Extension, features eight new stations a mere six miles apart, including two subterranean stops (at Mariachi Plaza and Soto).   

From Union Station, the line travels South into the Little Toyko/Arts District, then East along a disturbingly sanitized (the kinship of development is development) First Street to Boyle Heights, eventually passing to Maravilla, and East Los Angeles proper.

The stations feature artful embellishment: seating and shade structures, mosaics, and sculpture.  

(The top three images are from the Indiana Station, credited to Paul Botello, a founding member of the East Los Streetscrapers, key contributors to the 1970's muralist movement. Titled Syncretic Manifestations, pierced, stainless steel panels resemble Mexican papel picados, complex, perforated paper designs.)

The Eastside extension feels neither revolutionary, nor likely to create new patterns of use; and it offers not, a different vantage of the city like the grid skewering Pasadena connection.  

Still, the sisyphean task continues... 

Next stop: Expo Line and westward ho!

Density Dogma (Part 1)

Density is enjoying a heyday, back from the urban planning scrapheap, the manifesto de jour.

'Mixed use, multi-story in-fill, near transit': the current planning charge, a mantra for the development gryphon. 

The re-engagement is understandable, amidst suburban disillusionment, the tireless push of affordable housing advocates, and increased concerns over the resource intensiveness of ever-expanding beltways. 

Still, the urban occurrence is being fueled by more than just green jeans and a reprinting of the Jane Jacobs oeuvre.  It's because our cities are safe once again, or at least (statistically) safer than they've been in recent history.

Planners understood sustainability and the merits of density in the 1970 and '80's; but were also mindful of "defensible space" (Oscar Newman's study that examined high crimes and high-rises), and the perceived failure of supra quadras like Igor-Pruitt.

The violent crime rate in the United States (as measured by the Bureau of Justice Statistics) soared from a metric of 160.9 in 1960 to 758.1 in 1991; decreasing since.  The degree of urbanization, its perceived connection to lawlessness, and middle class flight, often drove policy prior to the onset of trend reversals in the 1990's.

END PART ONE

Looks Like Teen Spirit

The University Gateway Project, latest in the Figueroa facelift,  jettisons its hijab.

Bricks and chunky massing, Brutalism with a masonry veil, giantic volumes masquerading as decoration.

Neo-trad(itional) to the max, bookending the more laudable Galen events center, shunning revered, Islamo eccentric neighbor, The Shrine Auditorium.  

Ugly.  Effective?  TBD.....

Sub Modern (Part One)

"How dangerously bourgeois," I wise assed to the latest kid Corbusier, "a few strips of teak on the face of el bloque.  A little charity for the ol' hammer and nail guys?"

"Even if I wanted to build one of your Beaux Arts fantasies," the architect spat, "I couldn't find the craftspeople--they're under six feet of dirt, along with your aesthetic."

(A common lament, blame not my inability to compose the picturesque, to enroll the broad grammar of architecture, sayeth the builder, I am limited by my charges.)

"That's funny," I returned, "because only a couple blocks away is the Queen Anne inspired Stein Building (second and fourth images), erected not in the 1880's, but in the 1980's.  You reckon the finish carpenters were mummies?"

Los Angeles actually boasts dozens of neo free classicals, design throwbacks, and revival revivals; inspiring novelties in a landscape dominated by nuevo Mediterrauseums, and Machine Age rip-offs.

"Stick-n-stucco rules," one custom builder allowed, "because it's fast, cheap and the popular taste."

"Is the blind, leading the blind," I asked.

"You're the critic," he responded, "you tell me."

End Part One 

Zanjas Follow Up

My Zanjas entry (9/24/09) generated two informative responses.  (The images, yet more shots of crenellations, are unrelated.) 

The first rejoinder from Double G: "My daughter attended Phoenix HS on Zanja (ditch in English).  There used to be a ditch from Washinton Blvd. to the ocean along now what is known as Zanja Street."

The second from Qualified Condition: "There is an portion that has been preserved along the Gold Line route adjacent to the Cornfield park--next time you happen upon the Gold Line have your camera handy on the westerly side as you enter the park. The Lincoln Heights/Cypress Park station also has a pretty decent art installation on the topic."

Zanjas

There is little remaining evidence of the shallow irrigation ditches, or Zanjas, that once carried water to parts of the city center.  A plaque here, a street sign there, a small stretch of channel along Figueroa Boulvard.  

Similar to acequias, these gravity chutes were originally earthen, lined later to improve performance amidst explosive growth.

Between the St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church and the Stimson Mansion on Figueroa Boulevard, a section of Zanja endures (image bottom).  Several brick lined sections of the aqueduct have been uncovered, or re-discovered, in recent years in and around Chinatown, or by MTA construction crews.

Communities Under Siege

From Windsor Village to Rancho Higuera, neighborhoods are challenging the developer friendly hegemony. Frequently at the center of the rancor, the latest planning fad or mandate: density along transit corridors. Familiar sounding mantra, sometimes paired with transit village, density appropriate, and smart growth.

Of course, transit corridors often ring neighborhoods with detached single family housing. Many, even well-to-do addresses like Windsor Square, are being encircled by scale disrespectin', shadow casting boxominiums and the like.

But wait, haven't we gone this route before? All those ugly dingbats built to the freeway's edge in neighborhoods like the West Adams Avenues and Sugar Hill. Density near transit, that was the idea then too. Only it contributed to the destabilization of those neighborhoods; non conforming "improvements" at the expense of established home owners; encroachment not rapprochement.

Field of Folly (Part 1)

L.A. Live, a 5.6 million square foot mixed-use development on 27 acres, North of the Staples Center, continues to rise, heedless of the prevailing scale, as if magically relocated from some 21st century wunderberg, like Shenzhen or Abu Dhabi. Imposing, like a drunken sumu at a Viennese Waltz ball.

Where Do the Commissions Go? Remember that topic line, dominated by housegoods and Japanese pull saws? Of late, the commissions have been CD bound, determined am I to grab a pequeno piece of Pico Union real estate, poised to absorb the value of downtown's swell. Turn of the century munificence amidst, well, the recentering, the urban rapture. Jogging distance to that ultimate destination: L.A. Live.

Then without warning last week, I began to reconsider the colossus, "will this be the height of folly?"
At least one of my planning wonks harbored similar concerns, "there's no retail, it's billed as an entertainment campus, and the mix may prove lacking."
"The next Grove," I asked, "or a tourist tourniquet, like Hollywood and Highland?"
"Pack the tower with millionaires and they'll be fine," came the response and a wink.

Still, I teeter. Certainly the reflected heat of the Staples Center, North America's most active arena, could be better captured. Yet, other downtown entertainment options like the ImaginAsian Center have failed to catch fire.

Will parking make the difference? I once offered in an interview, "the popularity of downtowns Culver City and Santa Monica have everything to do with parking. Cheap, plentiful, access easy, parking." Downtown Burbank offers the same. Parking planning in downtown L.A. on the other hand, despite the sort of off-street requirements many urban purists deride, exists as an exercise in premium pricing and little else.

University Gateway

Site prep continues for University Gateway, a mixed use development at the NW corner of Jefferson & Figueroa. Gateway is slated to provide 421 student apartments and 83,000 square feet of ground floor retail (including reportedly a major bookstore chain).

While some are concerned with scale, market impacts, and the conjunctive threat to the Felix Chevrolet showroom, the project might benefit preservation pursuits in the immediate University and North University neighborhoods, by providing more student specific housing close to campus.
University and North University Park boast some of the best 19th century housing stock in Los Angeles, a fair percentage of which serve ingloriously as a student dumping ground.

One Eastlake Manor, offered recently for sale, but long deployed as a jv flop house, featured a rare pully driven dumbwaiter, littered with empty bottles of Modelo and Carta Blanca. "Shameful," my client muttered, intended for the insensitive landlords happy to offer endangered architectural carrion to a rotating class of third-year buzzards.

That property sadly passed from one investor to another, and continues to host all manner of co-ed queens, New England run aways, and Carta Blanca lovers. In the meantime Urban Partners, the Gateway developer, expect to open by fall 2010.

What's in a Name?

How to get a project built? Start with the right name, like Martin Luther King Estates, Cesar Chavez Courts, or John F. Kennedy Condos. If the project has an "affordable" component--nowadays they call it "worker housing"--that'll help. Projects for seniors usually elicit sympathy too.

Rosa Park Villas. I guess it's better than Hitler's Haciendas, or Pol Pot Plaza.

Hopefully, they'll maintain the walk path against the freeway.

********************************
Yes, I'm open tomorrow at 2892 W. 15th ST from 2 - 5 pm, and oftentimes, just a bit longer.

Follow the green signs, 2 blocks North of Venice, 2 blocks South of Pico, 2 blocks West of Normandie, and 2 blocks East of Western.

The house has central heat, and these beautiful Art Nouveau registers, or vent covers. I hesitate to call them grilles, because they do boast a louver like system, adjust, and close.

The Expo Line Cometh

As work on the Expo Line advances, inquest deepens. What will the Expo Line deliver? Disappointing ridership, passing along the fringes of sleepy bedroom communities, and an also-ran manufacturing corridor? The beginnings of a vital East-West rail route, paralleling the 10 freeway, whisking commuters in-and-out of downtowns L.A. and Culver, USC, and the Hayden tract? Dizzy development, as suddenly incentivized builders makeover moribund Exposition Boulevard? Rising land and home prices, buoyed by a major infrastructure improvement and the hip factor. A massive uptick in crime, as undesirables breach the residential sanctum, get-aways performed on the hour and half-hour?

It's hard to predict ridership, particularly for the limited phase one section terminating in downtown Culver City, but officials project a healthy 43,000 non weekend boardings a day by 2025. Perhaps those numbers are politically augmented; still, the MTA has often been accused of low-balling predictions, and several lines have exceeded expectations.

While the ultimate phase two alignment is undecided, the target terminus is 5th and Colorado, in Santa Monica.

Developers, drawn by density bonuses and other perks, will likely contemplate projects along the industrial hinterlands between Arlington and La Cienega and beyond.

Overlooked amongst those factors contributing to the appreciation of LA real estate this decade: the completion of the Metro Red Line (or "the Subway to Somewhere" in 1999-2000) and Gold Line (2003). Studies concerning the impacts of rail transit in the bay area (BART), along the Miami-Dade system, in suburban Philadelphia (SEPTA), across the Eastside Metropolitan Area Express (Portland), and in DeKalb county (Georgia), show almost without exception higher property values (per square foot) in those areas served. The extent of property value increases appears tied to market penetration, i.e. ridership. (I'll write more about this apparent relationship soon)

The Cheviot Hills NIMBYS apparently foster a security concern, a stilted conkerbill of '70's urban warfare films, waves of lumbering, crime-committing zombies and icy cool pachucos, mysteriously excluded from other forms of transportation--even buses--waging gang sanctioned siege, overwhelming blubbery, leaden law enforcement.

Hmmm, puts me in the mood for a good Western.

The Death of the Empty Lot

Remember the empy lot of your childhood? How it functioned, even minus picnic benches, a corkscrew slide, and spring rider as a defacto park, a sandlot, for unorganized games and adventure play?

But when was the last time you saw that? As the original horizontal city tilts vertical, as the term high-density infill becomes a councilman's mantra, empty lots are being devoured like hot dogs at a Nathan's event. They're inaccessible besides, wrapped in tall, liability-staving, chain link.

While the city becomes more dense (adding an average 30,000 new residents a year), rarely are the remaining un-built parcels commandeered for municipal use. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy will sometimes acquire an acre of two, protecting its holy land, in the canyons or passes, inaccessible to most, practical for none.

The Cornfield or Chinatown Yard, the city's first state park, is a notable exception. The 32 acre site, former Tongva village, and Southern Pacific train yard, funnels into the LA River, near the Brewery Art Colony and Lincoln Heights.



Of course urban infill is supposed to be about less resource intensive sustainable (is it a chant or a drone....) access to urban amenities--like parks! Really it's about units man, units, units, units. Is it smart growth or just big growth?

Which is why we need more parks, particularly if we've lost its poor cousin--the empty lot.

The Expo Line

Why I am so optimistic about the future of neighborhoods like Jefferson Park, King Estates, and Expo Park West, amongst others?

In part due to the upcoming Expo line. While the ultimate terminus of the future MTA rail line (also sometimes dubbed the Aqua line) is still undecided, the first phase, scheduled to begin service in 2010, will run 8.6 miles, mostly along the Exposition Boulevard right-of-way (ergo the name), linking downtowns Los Angeles and Culver City.



The Exposition right-of-way, formerly the property of Southern Pacific Railroad, hosted passenger trains, including a Pacific Electric Red Car line, linking downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica until 1953. The right-of-way continued to carry freight service until 1990.

A neighborhood is like an industry, it needs to continually attract new people with commitment and concern. I'm not talking about gentrification, displacement, or any of the like. Neighborhoods suffer turnover: people move away, people pass away.

What does your neighborhood offer? The neighborhoods paralleling the 10 freeway have long offered attractive house styles and centrality (and in some cases, relative affordability). Now they'll also offer easy access to L.A.'s burgeoning inter-urban rail system. Stops will include: Flower at 23rd and Jefferson, and on Exposition, at Vermont, Normandie, Western, Crenshaw, LaBrea, LaCienega, and lastly at Washington and National.

The Ugliest Residential Block in Los Angeles?

One More Billboard Rant



The billboards pictured are the smaller poster panels, or "junior" panels. Although these signs are located on private property, they clearly derive their use--or value--from road traffic. (Otherwise, let them be oriented away from the commons!) They benefit from the investment society has made in roads. (To be clear, these signs are not advertising services or goods sold on-site.)


Does this not constitute a franchise on the public right-of-way?!





These images were captured on the 5800 block of San Pedro (South of Gage). A block of mostly single-story houses, dispicably checkered with off-premise outdoor advertising signs. The signs crane, giraffe-like, over preposterously high fencing and yards of barren soil, smelter waste, battery casings, and burnt clover.





An effort by landowners to maximize diminished economic abilities, a parasitical social practice, or another example of contested space in the urban landscape?

Or all of the above?

Civics Lessons

Billboards as civics lessons.

Ethical obligations, in storey-high lettering.

Sometimes these messages are sponsored by churches and civic organizations, or national foundations.

They mark territory as surely as other physical features, as surely as graffiti, possibly underscoring or deflocking special community needs or issues. The messages, incidentally, seem mostly intended for males, particularly the many advisories about parenting.

Is my community being debased by these towers of advocacy, presumed guilty, grouped into a mass, misunderstood, ghetto melange? Do outsiders presume the worst, and might those presumptions do further harm, particularly in a society guilty of uneven investment?



Should we discourage murders by chalking bodies on the sidewalk, and by using shell casings to form snowman-like eyes, ears, and mouth?

Didn't pop music used to deal with this stuff?

How Now Trader Joe's

Trader Joe's, the discount gourmet food chain, has nearly 300 outlets in 18 states. There are at least eight locations in Los Angeles, not including two in West Hollywood, thirteen blocks apart. Pasadena, a city of 140,000 hosts three, with others nearby in South Pasadena, La Canada-Flintridge, La Crescenta, and Monrovia.

Trader Joe's doesn't yet have a location in Council Districts 8, 9, or 10. The combined population of CD's 8, 9, & 10 is nearly 750,000, greater than Wilmington Delaware, Annapolis Maryland, or Newport News, Virginia. Much greater than San Clemente, San Carlos, or Santa Barbara (home to three stores).



Possibly there's a bit more moola in Santa Barbara than in "South Center City". But there would seem to be some moola here as well, as evidenced by the price of homes in Country Club Park, Western Heights, and LaFayette Square, to say nothing of View Hills, Kinney Heights or Victoria Park. Moreover, one doesn't need a lot of moola to afford a 69 cent pack of pasta, a 19 cent banana, or a loaf of multi-grain bread ($1.89).

For arguments sake, the Figueroa corridor might offer the most opportunity for the/an aspiring retailer. Close to U.S.C's grub-happy student population, downtown's soft-lofters, and a better option than the 32nd Street market for University Park's well-to-dos.



But who needs 'em? I buy most of my produce, and some of my other essentials (rice, beans, and tortillas) at Mercado Numero Uno. The warehouse style market is high-ceilinged, with broad aisles and open space. The in-store soundtrack includes zippy Cuban music. The location I like best is at 701 East Jefferson, where San Pedro and Avalon split. The Jefferson store hosts a pocket branch of the popular full sevice food provider Gallo Giro, with an exhibition-style kitchen offering traditional Mexican dishes like guisados and tamales, a bakery (panaderia), and juice bar (Aguas Frescas).



I'm addicted to the Platano incidentally.

Billboards Part 2

La Brea Boulevard. Ever notice? West of LaBrea they get the nifty billboards: chrome and leather furniture, Swiss watches modeled by Russian Grand-slammers, Scorsese flixs.




My neighborhood gets Sangria and P.S.A.'s.; and, even then we don't get the Child Obesity posting with the pretty and sympathetic Vanessa Williams-looking nurse. Instead, we get the Latin Nurse Ratched, disapproving and pitiless.





An alcohol advisory appears along Figueroa. I'm sure Palos Verdes has problems with social drinking and learnedness, though you'd never see a billboard such as this in a place such as that.


Inner city billboards have long been dominated by alcohol. Malt liquor, the original super-size-me (40 oz.), and brands like Hennessey's cognac, mount seductive depictions of ghetto high life: cars, black velvet, mod johns, and, well, Vanessa Williams-like babes.

I wish we could eliminate billboards altogether.

Billboards part 1

Last week the LA Times reported a settlement between the City of Los Angeles and two billboard companies, Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor, whereby 98 billboards would be removed, in addition to any erected after 1999 sans permit.

The settlement stems from a pair of laws passed by the L.A. City Council in 2002, which mandates yearly inspection fees (and a moritorium on new billboards).

The Times story cites a group called Scenic America (www.scenic.org), whose mantra is the wonderful: Change is inevitable. Ugliness is not.

Scenic America reports extensively on the Billboard industry, as well as other aspects of scenic conservation, including tree conservation, telecommunications towers, transportation planning and design, and utility relocation ("undergrounding").

With most of their reporting and assessments, I couldn't agree more.

The Worst Place on Earth

Sure I knew about Playa Vista, the Methane Wonderland. I'd driven past a time or two, usually shielding my eyes, cursing the show biz grifters that uncorked the development bottle by promising an all mighty Studio.

But I'd never been inside. Until last week, on a business call.




Immediately my internal compass shut down, and featherbrained, I landloped about the complex, timorously clutching my cell phone, eyed by suspicious, well-groomed labrador walkers, Electronic Arts employees, and rent-a-cops. Everyone drove Porsche Azucars--whatever. I collapsed. I recovered briefly in the library. There were no street signs or numbers. Buildings blocked the sun.

But with Floyd Landis-like determination I continued, traversing the sunken gardens, storming post-Corbusian courtyards, security kiosks, and development check-points.
The salt air drew me West. I tumbled over a stony wall, down an embankment blanketed by weed resistant netting, and onto PCH where I was nearly struck by a Porsche Paprika--whatever.

Photos don't lie!

Not In My Side Yard

Most Americans, I think, have become more accepting of ethnic integration.

It's generally no longer the case that when Sam from Senegal moves in next door, Frederick from Finland looks to pull stakes. A lot of folk even like the idea of having a family from the Seychelles living on one side and a bachelor from Bavaria on the other--particularly if it makes for better neighborhood eateries.

But now economic integration, that's another matter. Sure we don't mind holing up next to a mansion, playing low man on the economic totem, but a tent city in the corner empty lot--that's another story, and the SRO's--they gotta go! The poor, nobody wants 'em. No wonder they get exiled to vertical straight-jackets, herded into narrow urban corrals.

Am I trying to be an advocate for the "underclass"? Not exactly. But I am in favor of more housing choices--'cause there ain't many. You got your garden variety house, apartment, or....sleep on the beach and get a citation. As if the hippie burn-out wrapped in the moving blanket is slumming it, practicing some sort of civil disobedience, or researching a movie role. More likely, he was rip-sawed by an unforgiving economic system, or plagued by Gulf War syndrome, lacked family support, and caught a bad break.

Single Room Occupancy hotels and Tenement Housing are frequently deplored, a thing to be eradicated in order to achieve a higher standard. But is the housing really to blame, and in the absence of it where will people go? Shiny new condos in Newhall? I kinda doubt it. You might be able "to price" people out of a neighborhood, but you can't price them out of existence and even if you could, would you want to?

The New Paradigm

What happens when people decide they no longer want to buy houses? Seriously? What happens when decent earners get comfy in their two-bedroom, no frills walk-ups, preferring instead to spend money on long vacations, mango chicken, and slip rentals? When water cooler talk reverts to: riding mowers, elections, and Academy awards.

Los Angeles and San Francisco will soon be like New York City, where it isn't necessarily the case that people of middle-class loin strive to own. Where people live the whole of their lives, adolescence to seniority, without property ownership, without expectation and without stigma.

We're past the point of commiseration-less candor: 'Oh I'm sorry Mr. Entitlement can't scoop up a boy's pad in the Marina'. This isn't just about narrow comfort zones anymore (how I wish it were--this is more than a surrender to rhetoric). There ain't much of an entry level market left, and a lot of borderline buyers are beginning to back away.

What happens when the whole notion of ownership becomes removed and inaccessible, like pony polo or the fox hunt, obscure pastimes of the wealthy elite.

But this is America. What am I worried about? There's plenty of room for development in pleasing sun-belt destinations like Midland and Odessa, Las Cruces and Laughlin. They'll always be cheap four bedroom houses somewhere, and so long as there are, we'll never have to look at our model, at the ungainly pressures and policies of growth and decentralization. Shoot, who wants to bother with this analysis when there's shopping to be done at the cross-town mall.

Mansionification of Jefferson Park

"I've got good news and bad news", I told my J-Park clients, of the recent past and not so recent past. "Mansionification is here!"

McMansions: that's when you know you've made it as a neighborhood, when the scale and rhythm of the street is shot to hell. When pleasing conformity is compromised by big house big shots. When the redevelopment potential outstrips collective values and historical import.

But hey, Jefferson Park is in a category now with all the best Westside neighborhoods: North of Montana, Ocean Park, Brentwood, you name it. The neo-cons pump their fists in testosterone-heavy delight, "Yeahhh, Palmdale's coming to the city baby. I'm gonna build me one of them O.C. style Mediterranean pleasure palaces with an extra large berth for my H3".

It wasn't so long ago, that we lived in a single room, with livestock, and a shared bed, in teepees, igloos and thatched huts. I don't know when single men decided they couldn't be happy without 3600 square feet, a drink refrigerator, and jet-ski storage, some time in the 1980s I guess, maybe earlier. Hey if you can afford it--have at it consumptionists; but, do you really need to tear down, to alter beyond recognition, and to impact that which is around you as surely as the unmuffled growl of a Harley chopper?

Is a fourth bath with his-and-her changing areas really that important?

Downtown--I'm Baack!

So what's downtown Los Angeles going to be five years from now, ten years from now? Will it be a 24-hour center? Will it seem Manhattanized in places? I don't know.

I don't know if downtown Los Angeles can become the next great downtown success story, the next mega mecca. Maybe the Gehry Grand Ave project will happen, maybe it won't. Maybe the downtown living trend will peter out, exhausted by a phalanx of re-use projects and unendearing start-ups, high wire financial acts, and indifferent market response. Maybe it won't.

The thing I'm convinced of: it will be different. Different than the grand--not Grand--plans? Probably. Different from what it is now? Unequivocally. There will be more people living downtown for starters. There will be more services as well.

If you build it they will come? Yeah pretty much. "At what price will they cease coming?" Now that's the question. Selling housing in California ain't exactly like selling 3-D glasses to the blind. For the right price you could sell igloos on an expressway.

Adam's Ten Cents

The big money downtown real estate people are close, they've got a good feel for the hustle, for the zeitgeist, canny strategies abound. Here's my ten cents (it used to be "two" cents, but then you know...): put in a charter school and bank roll the heck out of it. Make that your centerpiece, photograph the computer labs, the indoor rec facilities, the cultural-rich field trips. Then you're selling to everybody, not just athlete playboys and furniture designers. Everybody.