Downtown Los Angeles – “The Next Great City”

Sandra Lien | April 12, 2016

By Sandra Lien Fifteen years ago, Downtown Los Angeles was best described as an urban wasteland, with 28 million square feet of available office space, an under-utilized convention center, and 10 struggling hotels surrounded by 30 acres of mostly vacant retail space, cheap motels (SROs), bars, strip clubs, and vacant lots. The daytime population was not much beyond office workers, pensioners, homeless, and semi-homeless hotel dwellers, and the streets of Downtown were virtually deserted after working hours. Even as recently as 2014, The Guardian reported that the residents of Skid Row made up over 33% of Downtown's residential populatio...