Will The Push to Create Green Manufacturing Jobs Shape the Development of L.A.'s Central City East?

Not too many people know of the Central City East Association (CCEA) outside of Central City East (CCE). What are the mission, purpose, and accomplishments of CCEA?

CCEA is in its 25th year, with a rich history of representing a part of Downtown that many people don't realize is a part of Downtown. If you look at the map of Downtown, its boundaries are from the 110 Freeway to the L.A. River. You cannot help but see that on the eastern bank, you have Central City East, which includes the Produce District, Fish District, and the cold storage area-the truly industrial part of Downtown's community of neighborhoods. It also extends as a gateway into the L.A. River. CCEA historically represented the area between San Pedro Street to Alameda Street. But now our membership extends from San Pedro Street to the L.A. River based on the two business improvement districts we administer: the Downtown Industrial District and the Arts District.

Both were created to provide these communities services and attention that without a BID they would not otherwise have. The services are primarily, like most business improvement districts in Los Angeles, for public safety and street maintenance-that is why property owners form these districts.

We also do much more than that. We provide communications among the members themselves and to greater Los Angeles and beyond. We provide marketing services, websites, press releases, interviews, and, of course, advocacy at City Hall. BID areas are fortunate because we don't have to be in an exclusively reactive mode when City Hall proposes something. We proactively ensure that the business community has a voice at the table, and we are often the leading voice in proposing public policy solutions.

You speak of the 25-year history of CCEA. If memory serves, Central City East grew out of a reaction to the redevelopment agency designating the area as "Skid Row". How has the CCEA evolved over the last 25 years?

You are correct that the impact of the centralization of social services in this concentrated area-what that meant to the future of industrial Downtown and what that meant to the economy of this area-activated the property owners in Central City East. Sadly, much of what they predicted would happen 25 years ago has happened. We have seen businesses close, jobs move away, and infrastructure degrade-with budgets nowadays, the entire city is looking at its infrastructure needs and wondering how they are going to move forward.

For the vast majority of the last 25 years, the city has ignored industrial Downtown. In the last year and a half, there has been renewed attention to jobs and retaining jobs in the city of Los Angeles. The way to do that may be to look at the development of this area as an industrial campus for the new industry-clean technology. Not just manufacturing of the technologies that will get us to a cleaner environment but also research and design. Much of the talk about Cleantech Los Angeles centers on the Arts District, which is the extreme eastern end of Downtown. That is the heart of our Arts District BID.

Even before proposals for a clean tech center, the area between Alameda Street and the Los Angeles River had already begun to develop a new vision. It's the last underdeveloped and underutilized district in Downtown Los Angeles. The conversation is ongoing about the vision for the Cleantech center. What should the vision be? Who ought to be around the table forming that vision?

Whether called Skid Row or Central City East, conflicting interests have been working to define land use and spur investment in CCE. Much like it was 25 years ago, CCE remains a battle ground today between advocates for industrial use and job creation and those advocating for housing and light retail. Who's winning?

That is a very timely question because, as a group, property owners from the Arts District and the Industrial District met with the new planning director, Michael LoGrande, at a breakfast organized by CCEA earlier this month. We have come a long way.

When the Industrial Land Use Initiative was first discussed by the CRA/LA and the Planning Department, it divided this community. It divided the community between the industrial operators and the people who understand the demand for housing throughout Los Angeles. There aren't many communities that want greater density. Here you have a community that sees housing as an instrument for the realization for the new vision for the Arts District, an artists' community that has been a vital part of the area for several decades and wants to remain a vital part of the area. It was a very divisive issue, but I am happy to report to you, as demonstrated by the conversation around the table with Michael LoGrande, that opinions have evolved and matured.

We are at a point where industrial property owners and property owners and residents who see the potential in the future of the area understand that there can be a balance. I am not saying that this is going to be easy or that there aren't still going to be differences of opinion about particular parcels and their best uses. Those discussions are still going to take place. But industrial property owners are looking for a sense of certainty. The people in this area expect and want to hear from city policy makers what they expect from this area for them to make the appropriate decisions for themselves and their property. That is lacking, even today, even with the discussion about clean tech, because it is being done, unfortunately, in a vacuum.

Community plans throughout Los Angeles, as a result of the budget crisis at City Hall, have not been completed or have been put on hold. In the Arts District, which is within the Central City North Community Plan, the community plan update process hasn't even begun. We are years away, unfortunately, from completing that effort.

We are optimistic, however, that the CCEA and CRA/LA were recently awarded a $200,000 grant by CalTrans to begin an important planning process. By no means will this replace the community plan process, but it is at least a substantial beginning. I commend CRA/LA for helping us in the process and the state for awarding us that grant. This is fundamentally a transportation grant. If you live or work in the Central City East area, there is no easy way to get here. The grant will allow us to explore options, and it also allows us to look at streetscapes, lighting, and other infrastructure improvements. That will at least get this conversation going.

When I spoke to Michael LoGrande, he was very enthusiastically looking at that effort, at least as a step in the right direction in planning an overall vision so that whether it is clean tech, whether it is a proposed housing development, or whether it is a cluster of new industrial jobs, they happen within a context that is driving toward an objective and goal for this area.

Industrial land use policy in the city of L.A. is rarely publicly debated and even more rarely defended. It has been so for decades. What changes to L.A.'s industrial land use policies are needed today?

It's about getting the right attention. When I hear statements made about bringing jobs to the Central City area that recall the romantic notion of manufacturing jobs that are the gateway to the middle class, I have difficulty with that definition of industrial. That is not the reality I see on the ground.

The streets here in CCE are narrow and incapable of meeting the goods movement requirements of today's modern industrial economy. The parcelization of the district works against anyone needing to amass land expansive enough-to provide the proper setbacks. That is a question that has not been remedied in 25 years, and I don't see how that could be easily done. The land here is simply not well-suited for reintroduction of massive industrial uses.

This area is poised for a delicate balance of jobs represented by new technologies and research and development that can spin-off into smaller companies that could possibly site in this area. There is space for light industrial. Given the scope of the discussions about the public transportation access that could be brought into this area, I could see that.

But you also have a large need for housing closer to the Central City and closer to jobs. The Arts District in particular is not afraid of higher density and wants to create a community with jobs and housing in close proximity. That would take an obsolete manufacturing center and an underutilized area Downtown and have it rise again as a gateway to the L.A. River, provide sustainable housing for artists and others, and keep a significant base of people here around the clock as other areas of Downtown have managed to do. That would increase the public safety in the area and the need for the amenities that make for a 24-hour downtown.

In 2006, the LAPD and the city of L.A. launched the Safer Cities Initiative, which was controversial at the time. Has the program been a long-term success? Does it still have support?

Yes and yes. In 2006, there were approximately 1,900 people on the sidewalks of Central City East every night, bedded down on the sidewalk. That included people who had been long neglected. They are near services. These were the mentally ill and the substance abusers who needed and deserved so much better than what we as a society had provided for them to that point. That population also included people here with the sole motive of taking advantage of the vulnerable. In both cases, the Safer Cities Initiative was a success. The management of the situation between the people who needed help and the people who needed to leave this area, who were here simply for criminal activities, was managed exceedingly well.

The Safer Cities Initiative was, and is, not just an enforcement tool. It had enforcement, no doubt about it, but it also had outreach to assist people who needed help but who perhaps lacked the proper identification, or who didn't even know what services were available or how they could access them. SCI enforced against drug pushers and pimps who are actively keeping people addicted to drugs and a life of crime. Those people went to jail. We are still very much in favor of the efforts to bring people inside, to house them, and to provide them with the services they need. Many homeless people are offered services and refuse them. But every single day, new people from throughout the country arrive at the Greyhound bus station, which is just a few blocks from here, and walk to Skid Row seeking help.

CCEA sponsors the Skid Row Walk the first Wednesday of every month at 6 p.m. It is for the public to get a better understanding of Skid Row. We have not missed one single month since Councilmember Jan Perry, the Midnight Mission, and I decided that we needed an instrument through which people could get a better understanding of Skid Row than what's provided through news coverage alone. You need to be on the sidewalk, you need to be on these streets, you need to talk to the people who are on those sidewalks, and the people who work here. When you do that, you see the tragedy that this area has become. Every single time we do that, you find people here from throughout the 50 states who have come to Los Angeles and need help.

We are not yet at a point, even if you look at the success of something like the Safer Cities Initiative, where we have solved what we do with the influx of humanity that comes here looking for help. One city and one neighborhood cannot shoulder the needs of an entire country, whether it's for mental illness, substance abuse, the economy, or a battered women running away from a violent situation at home. It is a priority for the business community that we find a solution for the people who come here and that there is adequate funding for services and housing and for police enforcement against those who victimize the vulnerable.

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Share your successes in grappling with the challenges in CCE that you have just enumerated.

Imagine if there were not a constant spotlight being placed on this area. Especially in Los Angeles, we end up getting fatigued about certain issues. My job is to ensure that there is no Skid Row fatigue, whether it is in the media, the court of public opinion, or City Hall. There are countless well-intentioned people who want to help the people in this area, and I appreciate those efforts. But it is daunting, tiring, and exhausting. Ask anyone who works down here. It is overwhelming to try to think of ways to address the situation. I represent, and have the honor of working with, people who have not cut and run. These are business people and property owners who believe in the city of Los Angeles, who at this time in our economy are voluntarily paying a higher property tax to fund a BID that's keeping this area as cleaner and as safer than the City alone can do. That helps everyone.

When we pressure wash the sidewalks, we are often applauded by people setting up tents on the sidewalk. That's not a solution. We should never be a city where sleeping on the sidewalk, where having a baby on the sidewalk, where prostitution on the sidewalk is considered the norm. We can't let that happen. But the community is attempting to make, and demand, that this area be as safe and as clean as any other community in Los Angeles.

The Central City East Association, in conjunction with the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, provides a 20,000 square foot warehouse in Skid Row for the homeless to store their possessions so they don't have to carry them around and leave them on the sidewalk where they can get stolen. The missions give you a cot but not a closet. We have a lot of people who are currently housed at the missions who store their possession in our warehouse. I don't intend to portray it as the solution, but the business community is a significant voice in helping the city come up with a solution for Skid Row. At the same time, those same Central City East business owners are employing thousands of people, most of them from South L.A. and East L.A. Those jobs need to be protected.

I see the new home of the Downtown Women's Center every day. I have been inside the existing Downtown Women's Center, and I can tell you, they do God's work. Now they are going to be even closer to the center of the business improvement district. The changes they are making to that block, to that building, and, most importantly, to the lives of the women they serve is something that is very, very exciting to see. CCEA is very happy to have them there.

Let's close by asking you to go about far east as most of our readers go, which is Broadway. What's your take and hope for the "Bring Back Broadway" initiative being advanced in the City of LA?

In 1987, I began work on the "Miracle on Broadway" revitalization program, which later spawned the first business improvement district in the city. I am never that far from Broadway. I live Downtown, so my Downtown interest in 24-7.

From our perspective here on the eastside of Downtown, we always enthusiastically support efforts to create a Downtown that goes from the 110 freeway to the river. The Bringing Back Broadway initiative is another step toward connecting downtown's neighborhoods. We hope to someday have safe passage and linkages between all of the communities in Downtown, and the historic core is very close to our efforts in Central City East. We applaud the efforts of Councilmember Jose Huizar on the Bringing Back Broadway initiative.