Will This Time Be Different?
Deborah Racine has lived in downtown Los Angeles for five years, and she calls it home. Nearly every morning, about 9 a.m., she leaves her residential tower near Grand Avenue and 2nd Street for a stroll into the city -- past parking lots, hotels and office buildings, past the public library, past Grand Central Market.
But when she need groceries, Racine, 48, a charity-events coordinator, often gets into her car and drives either north into Pasadena or west to the shopping district around Farmers Market.
Racine's routine is familiar to many of the thousands of residents who have moved into apartments, condos and lofts around downtown in recent years. Even as they praise the vertical living and urban feel, Racine and others say they've had to get used to living in an area without the chain bookstores, supermarkets and other shopping spots found in suburbia and other parts of L.A.
City and county officials signed off Monday on a massive retail, office and residential complex along Grand Avenue that backers say would fill the void.
The project is the most ambitious of several efforts in the last three decades to bring upscale neighborhood services to downtown.
The others -- including the 1970s-era Macy's Plaza enclosed mall on 7th Street and the 1980s-era 7th & Fig shopping center -- largely attract office workers, and some merchants there say business has been slow.
What has changed now?
Downtown boosters say the area finally has the residential population needed to support such businesses.
The population in the Central City has risen from an estimated 18,652 residents in 1998 to about 24,604 today, according to the Los Angeles Downtown Business Improvement District. Based on developments in the pipeline or under construction, the organization estimates that the population could grow to 48,000 in the next decade. (Census data for downtown since 2000 are unavailable).
Even before ground is broken on the Grand Avenue project, other developments catering to the new residents are moving forward rapidly.
Near 4th and Main streets, a sprinkling of restaurants and other businesses cater to a burgeoning population of loft-dwellers, who have settled into painstakingly restored old buildings.
Southwest of there, near Staples Center, a 50,000-square-foot Ralphs is under construction -- the first chain supermarket in downtown in decades. That project will also have 267 condominiums and a series of small restaurants and services -- including a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, a UPS store and a Coldstone Creamery -- and is slated to open late next year.
