december, 20, 2003 archives

i ♥ downtown

have i mentioned how fantastic the los angeles downtown news is? there’s no similar local news coverage in an area like north hollywood. one way the downtown news could improve is to seperate the online publishing schedule from the once-a-week print publishing schedule.

this week, two articles caught my eye: the first is a profile of mark tarczynski. he’s excited about ralphs coming to downtown (and facilitated the deal), reportedly being convinced it could perhaps be a bigger boon to downtown residential development than the staples center. that’s a very big “duh.” living near a sports center is not exactly a residential dream: the place is empty a huge percentage of the time, and completely screws up movement in the area the other times. urban areas need a healthy mix of retail, business, and residential development, and a sports arena isn’t any of those.

i’m still frustrated at this slavish devotion to the idea that downtown needs a big-chain supermarket. i guess i’m just not excited about a large parking lot and crappy, over-priced packaged goods. i’d be excited about a trader joe’s.

i’m curious where it is at third and la brea that tarczynski does his food shopping (my guess would be whole foods), and whether he’s noticed he lives blocks from this thing called the grand central market. (in fact, they say they have 12,500 square feet of retail space available for a supermarket. that would be perfect for a trader joe's, which averages about 10,000 square feet.)

another article in the downtown news talks about how us bank acquired the rights to put their name on library tower (the tallest building on the west coast). it’s a shame they keep renaming the building to match the highest-paying tenant.