Downtown Dynamics

There is an interesting article in today's Los Angeles Times, "Developers, industry battle for L.A.'s heart," by Cara Mia DiMassa. The story deals with competing trends and interests in downtown Los Angeles. On the one hand, there has been a great deal of success and revitalization as a result of creative redevelopment of old warehouses into upscale housing units. On the other hand, there is the pressure to maintain the industrial character of downtown because of the job base it forms.

The analysis conducted for the city by Keyser and Marston, a real estate advisory firm, concluded that changing the zoning of downtown's industrial land from industrial to residential "would confer substantial additional land value."

For city planners, there is a palpable fear that those "industrial users" would take their businesses and their good-paying jobs and tax dollars to more industry-friendly cities such as Vernon or Duarte. This is likely to become an issue when the L.A. Planning Commission and City Council take up the matter in the coming weeks.

"We are looking at it from the big-picture point of view," said Jane Blumenfeld, a city planner. "We are trying to make public policy…. The reason you have these rules and regulations in a city is to intervene when you have to intervene, for public purposes."

Read the whole thing.