Government agencies moving to downtown.

Public-sector employers consolidate to cut costs

Private-sector businesses have been doing it for years - consolidating, downsizing and relocating office space to cut costs.

Now government agencies are following the same strategy in downtown Los Angeles. City of L.A., state and federal agencies with operations scattered throughout the sprawling Los Angeles metro area are starting to centralize and consolidate those operations in downtown L.A., some if only because an earthquake has forced them to do so.

The expected influx of government workers would be a considerable boon to downtown L.A. commercial buildings, restaurants, retail stores and other businesses.

The L.A. City Council has passed four actions since 1987 to make downtown redevelopment a top priority. Specifically, the actions are aimed at redeveloping the historic core - an area of historic buildings bounded by First, Los Angeles, Ninth and Hill streets.

The State of California's office consolidation plan would put an additional 2,000 state employees in the historic core.

In addition, several government agencies are congregating in the so-called Central Business District, which is loosely bounded by the Hollywood (101) Freeway on the north, the Harbor (110) Freeway on the west, Alameda Street on the east, and roughly Ninth Street and Olympic Boulevard on the south.

"We need to centralize if the city is going to expand," said Dan Rosenfeld, assistant general manager of the city's Department of General Services. "The downtown has become the single most convenient location."

The increasing availability of mass transportation and affordable land and rental costs have made downtown L.A. a more attractive alternative for many government agencies, Rosenfeld said.

County re-evaluates

In recent years, L.A. County agencies have moved several departments out of downtown Los Angeles in an effort to consolidate. That may be changing though, said Les Detweiler, management analyst for the county's Chief Administrative Office. The influx of other government agencies into the Central Business District has caused the county to re-evaluate its inventory, Detweiler said.

Last year's earthquake also had an effect on the consolidation into downtown L.A.

The Jan. 17, 1994 temblor not only damaged a slew of government structures, it also shook up and sped up a few long-term plans to rebuild buildings and/or consolidate government employees.

For years, employees of the Metropolitan Water District were housed in an aging building in need of repairs. The quake prompted officials to speed up the search for a new headquarters location.

"The seed was planted for quite a while, but the earthquake certainly helped us (decide)," said Gilbert Ivey, executive assistant for strategic policy development for the MWD, a regional agency set up as a special district by the state Legislature.

Clinton clout

Meanwhile, on the federal level, the Clinton Administration's push to downsize government also has hurried along consolidation plans for many federal agencies.

"There is shrinking going on in the government," said Mary Filippini, a spokeswoman for the federal government's General Services Administration, Western Region. "But more of what we're seeing on the West Coast is consolidation instead of the massive downsizings."

A consolidation of government agencies in downtown would allow different levels of government to share information and minimize redundant departments.

"You could have shared facilities, shared child care, shared fleet maintenance and operations, shared transportation - all kinds of things that would benefit from this," Ivey said. "We could perhaps cross boundaries. It could be county, city, state - any kind of government agencies."

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority's new Gateway Intermodal Transit Center, a $149.5 million structure currently under construction next to downtown's Union Station, is expected to serve 115,000 passengers a day by train, subway, bus and Metrolink.

"It's a transportational linkage," said Steve Chesser, spokesperson for the MTA. "You'll have commuters coming from as far as southern Orange County and from Ventura and San Bernardino County."