He wore a dark suit with a crisp white shirt and a burgundy necktie, and as he made his way toward me through the late-morning patrons at Grand Central Market, he paused, eyes at his feet.<\/p>\n
He bent down, picked up a straw wrapper and disposed of it in the nearest trash can, then kept walking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of think of myself as the butler of downtown,\u201d said Hal Bastian, 65, who has lived in the neighborhood for three decades and is known to many as \u201cMr. Downtown L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bastian has worked in real estate and economic development for years \u2014 long enough to have helped bring in the restaurants, retail and night spots that transformed downtown, and long enough to have seen bust go boom and back again. I reached out to him after taking notes on a continuing trend:<\/p>\n
Tombstone rows of shuttered storefronts. \u201cFor Lease\u201d signs everywhere. Streets full of people in distress.<\/p>\n
Some of the old downtown buzz remains, partly because while much of the commerce has cratered, roughly 90,000 people still walk the streets. Even at the height of the downtown L.A. renaissance, there were issues. But the problems are bigger now, and I had a question for Bastian.<\/p>\n
Can downtown L.A. make another comeback?<\/p>\n
\u201cSpoiler Alert: It\u2019s been hard,\u201d Bastian wrote back to me. \u201cAND we will re-invent ourselves again!\u201d<\/p>\n
We made a date to grab coffee at Grand Central and then stroll. And it\u2019s worth noting that I once met Bastian in the same spot when Angels Flight, the iconic funicular that climbs Bunker Hill from Hill Street and connects Grand Avenue to the lower elevations of downtown, was out of commission.<\/p>\n
Nobody could figure out how to get the broken down trolley running again, but Bastian took the helm, and this is a man who likes to throw around a line by Henry Ford that goes something like this: Whether you think you can or you think you can\u2019t, you\u2019re right.<\/p>\n
The trolley got back on track.<\/p>\n
Thank you, Mr. Downtown.<\/p>\n
On the subject of whether downtown survives, there\u2019s always been the question of \u201cwho cares\u201d among some people who don\u2019t live or work there, or don\u2019t go to the sports arenas or cultural institutions, and wonder why there should be so much of a focus on downtown when every neighborhood has problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cDowntown is for everybody,\u201d Bastian said. \u201cIt\u2019s for people in Northridge and it\u2019s for people in Chatsworth and it\u2019s for people in South L.A., because it\u2019s an economic generator.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pandemic delivered a big blow, Bastian said, followed by widespread damage during demonstrations that followed the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And more recently, federal raids hit merchants and their customers.<\/p>\n
But Bastian said the biggest reason for the current struggles is that before COVID-19 hit in 2020, about 500,000 people worked in downtown L.A. He and others estimate that roughly half of them never returned.<\/p>\n
The post-COVID problems in downtown L.A. are similar to those in a lot of cities across the country. But if Mayor Karen Bass is interested, Bastian has all but written a speech he\u2019d like her to deliver from the steps of City Hall:<\/p>\n
\u201cDowntown has been suffering for a long time \u2026 because people did not come back to the office, including city workers. We are bringing our city workers back starting next week. City employees are going to be at their buildings \u2026 serving the public \u2026 at least four days a week, and the ones that come five days are going to get promoted faster. And I\u2019m inviting all of you in the private sector to do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
Note to Mayor Bass: What do you think?<\/p>\n
Bastian led me up Bunker Hill to California Plaza, where office workers were enjoying the sunshine. But Bastian noted that at 12:38 p.m. in early 2020, twice as many people would have been out there. <\/p>\n
The butler of downtown took one look at the grounds, by the way, and said that if he were the property manager and the grass was as brown as it was, he\u2019d expect to be fired.<\/p>\n
Heading south, we came upon the shuttered Daily Grill, near the shuttered Cafe Primo, across from the shuttered Limericks Tavern. We checked out two intersections that used to have two drugstores each, and all four of them are closed.<\/p>\n
Windows on vacant buildings were scratched by vandals. We passed a restaurant on 7th Street where four people had been stabbed on Sunday, and peering through the window at Bottega Louie, half the tables were empty, as Bastian had predicted. Along the way, he kept stopping to pick up trash.<\/p>\n
At the height of the turnaround, Bastian often worked with Carol Schatz, who ran the Central City Assn. Schatz retired and Nella McOsker, who is in that post now, shares Bastian\u2019s sense of optimism but said there\u2019s \u201cjust as much reason to sound alarm bells.\u201d<\/p>\n
In September, her agency issued a \u201ccall to action\u201d to public officials, saying 100 storefronts and one-third of commercial space is vacant, \u201ca higher vacancy rate than Detroit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always been visible homelessness and the mental health crisis in downtown L.A., and with the dramatic decrease in other foot traffic, it\u2019s more visible and it\u2019s more pronounced,\u201d McOsker told me, particularly along Broadway and Spring.<\/p>\n