Downtown L.A. needs housing for 100,000 by year 2010, blue-ribbon committee states; new panel picks up where the 'Silver Book' left off.

Downtown L.A. needs housing for 100,000 by year 2010, blue-ribbon committee states

New panel picks up where the `Silver Book' left off

Housing for 100,000 people in downtown Los Angeles should be built between now and 2010 to make the city a truly modern urban center with more than a nine-to-five population, a blue-ribbon committee appointed by Mayor Bradley has recommended.

"If downtown is going to be all we hope it will be, a key element will be the addition of 100,000 full-time residents there," said Robert Harris, co-chair of the 31-member Downtown Strategic Plan Advisory Committee and dean of USC's School of Architecture. "We need new housing across the range of affordability."

Harris did not say whether the new housing, which would have to compete for scarce land in downtown, should take the form of apartment towers, condominiums or semi-attached dwellings.

Only 86,000 people are estimated to presently live in the downtown area, a 1,000-acre-plus region bounded by the Hollywood Freeway (101) to the north, the Santa Monica Freeway (10) to the south, the Harbor Freeway (110) to the west and Main Street to the east. It comprises most of the Community Redevelopment Agency's Central Business District, Bunker Hill, areas to the east and west of City Hall and Little Tokyo.

The advisory committee, appointed by Bradley and Councilman Gil Lindsay last year, completed a $1-million CRA-subsidized study last month to define the needs of downtown Los Angeles as it heads into the 21st Century.

While the recommendation to increase the downtown population is only one made by the panel to date, that will change. Next summer the strategic plan -- pending approval by the city council and the Department of Planning -- will be in place as the official document to guide redevelopment policy, transportation, urban design, conservation and open space for downtown.

"We're at a point in which we believe we've completed the basic fact finding so we know where we're at," Harris said.

The plan will replace the so-called Silver Book, the citizen-prepared document that guided growth from 1972 to 1990, providing the impetus for the downtown skyline and its status as the West Coast's financial center.

Among other things, the new strategic plan will be a framework for land-use decisions by the City Council, design and zoning guidelines by the Planning Commission and transit proposals for a host of city and county agencies. In addition, it will advise city planners who update the all-important specific community plans, which spell out zoning limits, building facade standards, parking requirements and open space and public art rules.

"This is a plan developers, politicians, lawyers and the business community will all view as the guiding document," CRA strategic planner Susan Gilmore said.

So vital is the plan that representatives from the mayor's office, the City Council, eight city departments, the County, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Southern California Association of Governments and the L.A. 2000 committee have formed a technical advisory group to advise the citizens committee.

Key commission findings generally confirm the conclusions of studies by the Southern California Association of Governments:

* Employment downtown is projected to increase from 275,000 to 353,000 by the year 2010

* Total housing units in the Central Business District are projected to slowly rise from 28,000 to 32,600 by 2010.

* The annual employee income downtown is $55,000 for professionals and $17,500 for service workers. However, the median family income downtown is only $17,543, about half that of Los Angeles as a whole.

A major factor in implementing the commission's findings will be Council's willingness to raise the CRA's spending limit in the Central Business District from $750 million to $5 billion.

"The cap is a hidden issue in all this," said committee member James Hunter, president of the Central City Association. "Without it, I don't believe we will achieve anything."

The CRA, which says it will run out of public funds unless it gets the cap increase, has been sharply criticized by some council members for not building enough affordable housing units downtown. To show that it is moving away from supporting commercial development, the agency has earmarked almost a third of its $267-million budget to subsidize 2,500 affordable housing units with non-profit developers.

Initially, the blue ribbon committee was led by two CRA commissioners. However, because of the controversy surrounding the agency and its leaders during the past two years, Harris and Gilbert Ray, a partner at O'Melveny & Myers, have become the co-chairmen.

The membership roster of the committee itself provides insight into some of the new power players of Los Angeles. Members include: Sue Laris-Eastin, publisher of the Downtown News; Nelson Rising, senior partner at the Maguire Thomas Partners; Arthur Snyder, top lobbyist and former city council member; Larry Kirk, CRA board member and general manager of the Los Angeles Hilton; George Mihlsten, partner at Latham & Watkins; developer Ira Yellin; and representatives from the Los Angeles Conservancy, a homeless outreach program, the Atlantic Richfield Co. and the health care and jewelry industry.

"It is accurate to say the commission represents a broad mix of interests," Harris said. "Whether there is power there remains to be seen."

Creating a sense of economic and cultural "interconnectedness" throughout the whole downtown area -- from Little Tokyo to Olvera Street, City Hall to the jewelry district -- is the the most nettlesome issue the committee is tackling, Harris said. "Growth in the past somewhat singularly focused on office space Now we need to get on with the issues of housing, transportation and education."