LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN
NEWS
9-13
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A parking king gets jail time, and other happenings Around Town.
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New lease allows American Apparel to stay Downtown for 10 more years.
W W W. D O W N T O W N N E W S . C O M
August 24, 2009
Volume 38, Number 34
INSIDE
Let’s Do Lunch
Banking on the Ritz Downtown Hotels Prepare for The 1,001-Room Ritz/Marriott at L.A. Live by Richard Guzmán
Daytime Emmys come Downtown.
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Urban Scrawl on the Council’s recess.
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Big clothing sales hit Downtown.
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city editor
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or years, Downtown advocates and those in the travel and tourism business have been eagerly awaiting a Convention Center headquarters hotel, believing such a facility would allow the city to compete in the lucrative convention market. Now the wait is almost over: Developer Anschutz Entertainment Group is putting the finishing touches on a 54-story, 1,001-room hotel at L.A. Live. It is set to open in less than six months. The striking $900 million edifice will be one of Downtown’s most visible new attractions. Yet it also poses a unique dilemma for other area hotels. The question is whether it will be crushing competition, a savior for the indus-
try, or both at the same time. The hotel industry Downtown has been stormy lately. Amid the recession, occupancy rates this year for some of the major area hotels are down between 12% and 30%. Still, on the surface at least, area hoteliers say they do not expect to fight for customers with the Convention Center headquarters hotel — which is actually two hotels: an 878-room JW Marriott and a 123-room Ritz-Carlton, with 224 additional Ritz Carlton-condominiums on the upper floors of the building. Instead, they are welcoming the new project with open arms, believing it will be a magnet for gatherings whose needs far exceed the rooms the Ritz/Marriott can provide. Some see Hotels, page 7
photo by Gary Leonard
Like most Downtown hotel mangers, Mike Czarcinski of the Westin Bonaventure welcomes the Convention Center hotel, believing that while it creates competition, it also allows the city to attract conventions it would otherwise miss out on.
Targeting Taggers
Bidding for Governor
New Police Unit Focuses on Downtown Graffiti
Former eBay Head Meg Whitman Makes Her Three-Pronged Pitch to Downtown by Jon Regardie executive editor
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he appearance of gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce last week begs two questions: 1) Does California need to be run like a business in order to dig itself out from
Vintage finds at Flea.
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The Regardie Report
Hockey Fest means the puck stops here.
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photo by Gary Leonard
Adrian Lopez (left) and Raul Riojas comprise the Central Division’s graffiti task force. The officers, who usually work in street clothes, concentrate on going after graffiti vandals in Downtown. by Ryan Vaillancourt staff writer
Five great entertainment options.
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19 CALENDAR LISTINGS 21 MAP 22 CLASSIFIEDS
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raffiti is one of the oldest, most ubiquitous forms of urban blight, but until William Bratton came to town seven years ago with an emphasis on stopping small quality-of-life crimes, it was not high on the Los Angeles Police Department’s priority list. Still, tagging has proliferated in parts of Downtown. Now, that could change. In June, Central Area Capt. Blake Chow green-lit a task force that has two full-time officers working solely on identifying and building cases against prolific Downtown
graffiti vandals. “With the way we’ve traditionally tackled this problem, it’s very hard to catch someone and when there have been arrests, it’s been almost a slap on the wrist because most were juveniles,” Chow said. In the past, officers have focused on monitoring tagging hot spots in hopes of catching vandals in the act. Central’s graffiti task force will take that tack sometimes. But the thrust of the efforts will be investigating prolific taggers and then using department resources and coordinating with other agencies to link see Graffiti, page 14
the economic avalanche that has buried Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the legislature, and all the little people up and down the state? and 2) If the answer is yes, could you run it like Whitman’s former company, eBay, and return to financial health by having residents bid against each other for services? For example, would BigTiminBigBear need to bid $96.01 for one night in a cabin at Yosemite in order to beat out Ozwaldo64, who topped out at $95? Whitman, who in a decade of running eBay made almost enough money to hire Sam Zell as her personal assistant (considering the Tribune Co. travails he may actually need the gig), didn’t answer the second question at the Chamber luncheon on Wednesday, Aug. 19. But speaking to the City West crowd, she suggested that a few li’l things that work in business might make sense when it comes to running the state. “We do not have a revenue problem,” Whitman stated in her hourlong talk, which included a not-tootaxing (no pun intended, though she did take the requisite no-new-taxes stance) question and answer session. “We have a spending problem of
photo by Gary Leonard
Ex-eBay chief Meg Whitman brought her gubernatorial campaign to Downtown last week, speaking at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce as part of the Chamber’s California Candidates series.
epic proportions.” Whitman, who appears to be the leading candidate to get the Republican nod for governor, never mentioned that some of the problems facing the state surfaced under the existing Republican governor. Instead, in an address filled with a mix of humor, personal “warmth” and displeasure with the status quo, she poked at a series of vexing problems. And wouldn’t ya know it, she see Whitman, page 15
Since 1972, an independent, locally owned and edited newspaper, go figure.