LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN
NEWS
Readers Choice
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2
A new statue, tipping cops, and other happenings Around Town.
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The readers speak out on a streetcar, a freeway capping plan and more.
W W W. D O W N T O W N N E W S . C O M
May 31, 2010
Volume 39, Number 22
INSIDE
Vote for The Best Of Downtown
Eli Broad: ‘We’d Rather Be Downtown’ Philanthropist Details Plans for a $100 Million Grand Avenue Art Museum, Though Santa Monica Is Still in the Running by Ryan VaillancouRt
Urban Scrawl on the sinking city.
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Paying tribute to local firefighters.
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‘South Pacific’ docks at the Ahmanson.
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staff wRiteR
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li Broad is no stranger to Grand Avenue. He helped found the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Grand Avenue Committee. With former Mayor Richard Riordan he revived the stalled plan to build the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and he convinced the Los Angeles Unified School District to hire a big-name architect to build its $232 million arts high school on Grand Avenue. Last year, he came back to where he started, infusing a financially strapped MOCA with $30 million, essentially saving the Downtown institution. Now, Broad wants to directly join the Grand Avenue party by building a $100 million art museum on the street, across from MOCA. If he has his way, the 120,000-square-foot facility, which would showcase some of the 2,000 works owned by his
Broad Art Foundation, would open by 2012, in what he termed “an exciting, iconic piece of architecture.” The billionaire philanthropist has spent the past several months publicly weighing two locations for the proposed museum, the other being in Santa Monica, where the foundation now has offices (a previous contender, Beverly Hills, pulled out of the running earlier this year). But in a recent meeting with Los Angeles Downtown News editors and reporters, Broad delivered his strongest public preference yet to place the museum — to be called The Broad Collections — in the Central City. “We’d rather be Downtown,” Broad declared. Despite the enthusiasm for Grand Avenue, Broad clearly stated that a deal is not done. He expressed skepticism about securing approvals for a project in a spot where he has to deal with four entities: see Museum, page 10
photo by Gary Leonard
Philanthropist and art enthusiast Eli Broad hopes to build a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue. It would house some of the 2,000 works collected through his charitable foundations.
The Broadway Backslide Cornerstone closes its Justice Cycle.
Once the Busiest Retail Corridor in Downtown, Key Street Now Suffers From High Vacancy and Low Rents by RichaRd Guzmán
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city editoR
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Five great entertainment options.
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16 CALENDAR LISTINGS 18 CLASSIFIEDS photo by Gary Leonard
About 20% of Broadway’s street-front retail is vacant. Contributing factors include the economic downturn and competition from shopping centers in other cities.
R I C H A R D
ou can find just about anything for sale on Broadway. Stores, many of them small mom and pop shops, hawk everything from wedding dresses to plastic toys to opulent jewelry. In some ways, the street has barely changed in decades. On weekends in particular, Broadway is filled with activity as mostly Latino shoppers crowd the sidewalks while retailers scream out the bargains from the front of their stores. But something else has changed drastically, and shoppers can now easily find something that used to be rare: vacant storefronts. At least 20 “For Lease” signs dot Broadway from Second to Ninth streets. On a recent weekday afternoon, dozens more street-level storefronts were shuttered. A survey conducted by officials with Bringing Back Broadway, 14th District Councilman José Huizar’s effort to turn the street into a major, entertainment-focused destination, found that the vacancy rate is now 18%-20% on the portion of Broadway see Broadway, page 8
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