LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN
NEWS Volume 38, Number 39
INSIDE
A ‘Parade’ at the Taper
September 28, 2009
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Movies at L.A. Live, and other happenings Around Town.
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The rising price of gold means hard times for some Jewelry District businesses.
W W W. D O W N T O W N N E W S . C O M
Honoring Los Angeles’ Finest Memorial to Fallen Police Officers Arrives in Downtown by Richard Guzmán city editor
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Urban Scrawl on fire and ice.
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New merchants band together.
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photo by Gary Leonard
An 11,000-pound memorial that contains the names of the 202 Los Angeles police officers who have been killed in the line of duty arrived in Downtown last week. A design error had the plaques with the names facing the wrong way.
new Downtown memorial received a respectful welcome last week, as a team of LAPD motorcycle officers escorted a flatbed truck carrying a huge wooden crate through the community. Inside the crate was an 11,000pound brass memorial with the names of the 202 LAPD officers killed in the line of duty during the department’s 140-year history. The memorial arrived from Kansas City, where it was built, to its permanent home on Tuesday, Sept. 22, on the plaza of the new police headquarters just south of City Hall. It was lowered onto its base as
LAPD officers watched, some snapping photos, others standing silently in respect of their fallen comrades. “This memorial is a salute to all the men and women of the LAPD for the work that they do and for what they do to take care of us and the city,” said Karen Wagener, president of the Los Angeles Police Foundation, which raised the $725,000 to create the memorial. An unveiling ceremony is scheduled for Oct. 14, she said. The new building, a replacement for Parker Center, is scheduled to be dedicated 10 days later. The memorial was designed by the Los Angeles-based firm Gensler, see Memorial, page 6
Hip gear at the Crack Gallery.
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Play 4th and Long Football and win prizes.
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A triathlon ends in Downtown.
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Evo Hits Hard Times, Concerto Files Bankruptcy by Anna Scott staff writer
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hree years ago, developers Sonny Astani and the Portland-based South Group were at the forefront of a building frenzy that would transform Downtown’s South Park neighborhood. Astani was moving forward with plans for Concerto, a three-phase condominium project at Figueroa and Ninth streets, while the South Group had opened the sleek, $65 million high-rise Elleven and had four other projects in the pipeline. Since then, however, the troubled economy and financial markets have taken a toll on both developers’ plans, with a significant crash occurring in recent weeks. Astani this month put Concerto into
Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The South Group, meanwhile, has seen its newest condominium tower, Evo, slip into the hands of a lender. Not only has the developer also scrapped plans for two more 34-story condominium towers in the area, it has lost the land where the buildings were to rise. Both Concerto and Evo were largely financed by the Chicago-based Corus Bank, which was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Sept. 11, a situation that has rippled across the national real estate market. That, however, could have very different outcomes for the two Downtown developments. A Sour Note Astani said he was pushed into filing for see South Park, page 8
Swine Flu Is Coming, But Are the Central City and Its Office Towers Ready? by Ryan Vaillancourt
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Reviewing ‘Art’ at East West Players.
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Sonny Astani’s Concerto project (left) and the South Group’s Evo high-rise helped pioneer Downtown’s South Park neighborhood. Both projects have been impacted by the struggling economy.
One Flu Over the Downtown Nest staff writer
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photo by Gary Leonard
The South Park Shake-Up
Dr. Robert KimFarley is urging employees to stay home when they’re sick. The California Department of Health has warned that as many as one in four Californians could be infected with swine flu.
photo by Gary Leonard
he upcoming flu season has already generated a mountain of news stories, health advisories and warnings. The major point of concern, as well as the principal question, is what will happen when H1-N1, commonly referred to as swine flu, starts wending its way through the population. The public health world is taking its traditional heightened precaution to schools, which are perennial hotbeds of disease transmission. The same caution often comes with mass transit, especially airplanes. But perhaps overlooked as high-risk zones are office towers, the workplace of tens of thousands of
people in Downtown, said Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, director for Communicable Disease Control and Prevention for the Los Angeles County Public Health Department. “Whenever there’s crowding, there is much more opportunity for the transmission of illnesses that are spread by droplets — coughs and sneezes — like influenza,” he said. In office towers, that means risks rise in elevators and open-air, cubicle-filled businesses. But as in schools, there are a number of common sense measures office workers can take to reduce their risk of infection: Wash your hands, keep hand sanitizer around at all times, and avoid see Flu, page 8
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