Downtown feels fake because it is; not many people go there. Earlier improvement schemes have swept away affordable housing, and now all you see are mirror-paneled buildings that fling the wink of a merciless sun back into your eye. The people you do see downtown are taking a break from work at the Westin Bonaventure or one of the many $10-an-hour parking garages. Or they’re visiting the library, or homeless. Dayna Tortorici, from Los Angeles Plays Itself, n+1 mag

I was born in Los Angeles proper two years before the 1984 Olympics. Though I grew up near the city with it as backdrop just miles away by LAX, like a proportion of many families, we made the journey to downtown for shopping and errands – ours went to Chinatown and the Jewelry District (my dad was a contract goldsmith), others to Olivera Street and Santee Alley.

I left Los Angeles for college and eventually returned in 2012 to reinvent myself, first as a solo criminal practitioner. Among the temp jobs I took to support myself part time was at an Ad Tech company where I did QA and support for an app they had released – it was in Culver City in area called Hayden Tract. Shortly after, it became my full time job, and I moved in with two friends into a factory converted loft with a loading dock in the Arts District in Downtown.

Unlike Ms. Tortorici’s assessment of the residents in Downtown, I wasn’t visiting the library, nor was I homeless.





Downtown Los Angeles has seen quite a few changes, particularly with new residential buildings and other property development projects. Modern gentrification has occurred, and most recently much of it has been centered in the Arts District. For anyone familiar with New York, in many respects the neighborhood is like the meatpacking district.

Industrial and quiet, the Arts District is just east of Little Tokyo and a stone’s throw from Skid Row, which is home to a little under 20,000 homeless people in the city. In just the two years since I left the Arts District, a few projects have been completed including:

One Santa Fe (Directly across from SCI-Arc)

The opening of Factory Kitchen

The neighborhood’s very own Umami Burger

To note, these new additions are on top of the existing eateries and bars such as Villain’s Tavern, the Pie Hole, Wurstkuche, and Angel City Brewery. By the way the momentum is going, I can easily predict that the Arts District will no longer be a nook that truly houses artists in residence.

The one unique aspect of the Arts District is that it’s like no other place in Southern California. The industrial buildings are tall and old enough at various locations that it’s an ideal spot for filming and photography – usually to pretend you’re not in Los Angeles. During the year I lived there, I remember a staged car explosion that ended up in a movie a year later.

Paddy’s Pub from the show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

The other more interesting aspect to the Arts District is that the office spaces are less expensive than in neighborhoods in other cities given the calibre of existing tenants. There’s also surprisingly a great amount of vacant space, and this is the reason why I think we’ll see an even more rapid change in the district.

At the moment, I’m only aware of two technology businesses that have their offices in the Arts District in Los Angeles. One is Oblong Industries (of Minority Report), which is housed in a former railroad depot, and the other is Hyperloop (though it’s not officially related to Elon Musk).

Let us compare the offices in the Arts District with offices in SoMa in San Francisco.

Here’s 3,530 square foot for $50/SF/Year in SoMa

This one appears to be $1.54 a square foot per a month in the Arts District

Given that the building in SoMa is $50 a square foot a month:

50 * 3530 (total space) = $176,500.

In the Arts District, $1.54 a square foot equals out to $18.48 a year:

18.48 * 8600 (total space) = $158,928.

Based on these two postings alone, for nearly $20,000 less a year, you can have more than double the space in the Arts District in Los Angeles. Additionally, almost everything will have exposed brick. Not bad.

As it turns out, others have noticed the burgeoning neighborhood. The Los Angeles Times published this article about how the tech scene is taking post in downtown, moving away from places such as Santa Monica, which calls itself Silicon Beach. Personally I believe the mentality behind the moniker comes from the same place as those who flock to Hollywood, or for Snapchat to place themselves in Venice Beach. But that thought is for another post.

Having a company so far west has its disadvantages given the landscape of transportation in Los Angeles. One of the reasons why Santa Monica is a geographic challenge for talent is because anyone living deep in the Valley or on the Eastside will have difficulty heading into the office, whereas in downtown, it’s central enough to where the radius encompasses many more areas in the city. To note, the three brand name schools in the area are UCLA, USC, and Caltech (though it only has an enrollment of 2,209, and it’s safe to say a sizable amount are not looking to join the scene), with many more notables in the periphery.

A small one bedroom in the Arts District is probably around $2,000 a month to rent, and slightly better deals can be found closer to the center of downtown. But should the Arts District become the ground zero for the next several billion dollar companies, a prime neighborhood that will likely see itself house a significant number of these new workers is Highland Park.

Not at all a stranger to gentrification, the radio show Marketplace devoted a series called York & Fig on the changing neighborhood. One of the primary reasons why Highland Park is a strategic location to the Arts District is that the Gold line cuts through it from Pasadena, taking about 20 minutes between the two locations. Housing in Highland Park compared to the rest of the city toward the west is still relatively affordable, and many trendy shops have cropped up in recent years. Highland Park in some ways is comparable to the Mission or Mission Terrace in San Francisco prior to 2000.

Should the influx of this new workforce set itself in Downtown Los Angeles, it’s still up for guesses as to whether the reaction will be similar to how it’s played out in San Francisco. On one side, more jobs will be created for the city, but the side effect is that a sizable amount of people displaced to move elsewhere due to rising rents and costs.

Or, maybe I’m just completely off, and the Arts District will simply continue to exist as a place for elaborate hot dogs, the gun range, and expensive rent.