Where a porn palace stood
THERE'S AN INVIGORATING wave of revitalization sweeping through many communities in Los Angeles County. Housing that is affordable to the middle class is springing up in Pasadena and Long Beach, Venice and downtown, Silver Lake and MacArthur Park, Echo Park and Eagle Rock. Windows that were once boarded up are reopening. Abandoned buildings are filling up with residents. Art galleries are attracting young and old. Restaurants and nightclubs are bustling, and streets once avoided at night because of crime are crammed with customers.
What could be bad about that? New retail business is generating sales taxes. New homes are producing property taxes. These revenues, in turn, pay for new public safety efforts, new parks, new community cleanup work and improved roads.
Call it gentrification or call it revitalization. The result is undeniably positive for a community.
Gentrification can result in the displacement of poor and low-income renters who lack the money to live in any but the lowest-priced apartments in the most crime-ridden neighborhoods. That's certainly something that policymakers have to try to address as neighborhoods change. But for local owners of homes and businesses, and for the community as a whole, gentrification's net effect is overwhelmingly positive.
That's why it is the goal of every down-on-its-luck neighborhood. City government led the makeovers of Old Town Pasadena and downtown Long Beach. Pasadena chartered the district with strict development guidelines and rules requiring the preservation of historic buildings. It allocated tens of millions of dollars for the project. Long Beach raised hundreds of millions in public and private money, bought out rundown properties, rezoned the area and sold land to developers. Both communities brought light-rail lines to the heart of their downtowns.
The arrival of the creative class is often the key to the transformation of down-and-out neighborhoods. Young software and Web designers, students and artists and entrepreneurs help reopen boarded-up buildings, clean up abandoned yards and repair the broken windows that represented a rapidly declining quality of life in an area. These new residents are generally attracted by low-rent lofts and similar converted rental housing, and they bring discretionary income and relatively low safety concerns (compared with families with children) to a neighborhood. Hip retailers open for business. New restaurants and nightclubs follow.
