Editor’s note: This is part of our “My LA” series — a look at how changing demographics are shifting culture in LA’s historic neighborhoods and communities — told by the people from those communities.
Partly out of comfort, partly out of inertia, and largely because of a swimming pool — I’ve lived on the same block in downtown Los Angeles since I arrived here in 2004. What’s unfolded on the four corners around which my life has revolved mimics the state of downtown.
Downtown’s office vacancy rate has climbed to roughly 35% — among the worst in the country — and this year’s priciest downtown office sale went for about $150 per square foot, down from a pre-pandemic norm of roughly $450.
These corners where I’ve lived for 22 years — S. Figueroa and Third Street, on the western edge of downtown — are practically empty now.
SW Corner: A once-flourishing hotel
My life as an Angeleno began at the sprawling Downtown Marriott Hotel on the southwest corner of S. Figueroa and Third Street. This was where my soon-to-be employer put me up for my job interview and subsequent training.
In that winter of 2003, the hotel — built as a Sheraton Grande in 1983 — was bustling with life. Maybe you went to some event there, or the bar, or the arty Laemmle Grande 4-Plex in the base of it. Or maybe you just knew it from this music video, which over 90 million people have viewed.
NW Corner: The office park that looks like a college campus
Just across the street on the northwest corner, the studios of the employer who lured me here — the public radio show Marketplace — were nestled on the second floor of a campus-style office complex then called Figueroa Courtyard, built in 1979.
Our neighbors included the Associated Press and Agence France Presse — along with the California Community Foundation, One Legacy, the LA County Bar Association, UCLA Extension, and an early outpost of StubHub. There was even a sweet cafe.
Having been downsized from a job two years earlier, I was happy to have this new one — even though it meant moving across the country and working wildly erratic hours.
NE Corner: The rent-stabilized apartments, circa 1969
Since I was on my own and certain I’d transfer back East after a year, I rented an apartment across the street at the northeast corner in the complex then called Bunker Hill Tower Apartments, built in 1969. Whether I was expected at work at 1 a.m. or 4 a.m. or 7 a.m., this meant I could wake up a half-hour before and scamper across South Figueroa Street or over it on the elevated pedway, one of a half-dozen that connected buildings above ground.
It also meant easy access to a spectacular swimming pool. This was a major plus, as lap swimming — a habit I’d begun in my late 30s — had become as necessary to me as air.
Another bonus: my unit, as were the majority of 455 others in the complex, was rent-stabilized.
SE Corner: The World Trade Center
To run errands elsewhere in downtown, I crossed over the pedway that connected to and through the World Trade Center, a sprawling building on the southeast corner. There I passed a magnificent Tony Sheets mural, waved to the security guard at the desk, and traversed south through the brutalist Bonaventure Hotel–or east through the Bank of America building, passing a candy shop, a sandwich joint — which later became a pizza joint — and a Starbucks.
The neighborhood‘s ghosts
Making friends in my new city was fairly easy because I’d invite most anyone I met during the week to an open house at my one-bedroom apartment.
Even people who knew nothing about downtown — or who studiously avoided it — showed up out of curiosity. They’d marvel at the view.
Early on, a partygoer clued me in to the troubled and fascinating backstory of my new neighborhood.
The land on which I lived and traversed each day, 133 acres of it, had once been inhabited by old Victorian houses and apartment buildings. They’d been mowed down in the 1960s in the name of “urban renewal.”
The swimming pool, the apartment buildings, the hotel, the World Trade Center, the office park: All of it had been part of a master plan.
Surely, said those who knew the history, there are ghosts all around you.
Devouring that history became my holy spirit.
And yet I also rooted in the present, as the landscape around me continued to evolve.
A federal courthouse rose and blocked my view of the deco façade of the Los Angeles Times building. A Colburn school addition. Grand Park.
A team of construction workers from Germany moved temporarily into our building and, by day, affixed the cladding on the new museum, the Broad. Next to it, a fancy restaurant and pricey apartment building.
A new city council person named Jose Huizar trumpeted his excitement in “bringing back downtown.”
A new subway stop tangled out the foreground of my otherwise spectacular view.
A billionaire from China bought the Marriott, renovated it, turned the movie theater into a pricey private school for international students, and announced grand plans for a soaring tower — intended to be the tallest in the West.
A charter school moved into the World Trade Center, whose owners announced a similar, grandiose condo expansion plan.
During this wild period of evolution, our landlord announced a major renovation, and began offering “cash for keys” to longtime residents to entice them to leave. Five thousand grew to $35,000 — and I kept saying no. That loot was taxable and, besides, it would only cover the cost of market-rate rent for a short while.
By now, my personal landscape had changed: I’d fallen in love with a man who joined me on Bunker Hill. And I left the radio job that had brought me to town.
The Bunker Hill bubble popped
All these changes in my life and my city brought new life to the neighborhood. Streets came alive, becoming vital and full of promise.
Then, it all started to unravel.
The feds busted Huizar, the billionaire hotel owner and others in an ugly, wide-ranging federal racketeering scandal.
A deadly pandemic shuttered the entire world around us.
That former Marriott became a homeless shelter for a number of years. Now, with its owner a convicted criminal on the lam back in China, it’s an empty shell — a totem to its once-lively past.
Marketplace and all those other glittering tenants eventually fled the nicely landscaped office park, which now sits largely empty. You can rent an office suite for a song.
The owners of the World Trade Center cleared out many of its tenants and, this spring, announced they’re converting at least part of the building — not into condos, as originally planned, but as low-income housing.
Despite the cosmetic improvements, the apartment complex I’d called home for so long lost its luster.
Four years ago, we decided it was time to move — but we didn’t go very far.
We wound up around the corner.
I still get to swim in the same swimming pool.
Is your neighborhood changing? We want to hear your story. Whether you’ve lived on your block for forty years or four, we want to know: What does “home” mean to you right now?
Share a brief memory or a thought on how your neighborhood is changing with us at pitches@thelalocal.org. We’ll feature some of our favorite responses in our newsletter, and if your story sparks something deeper, we may reach out to commission a full-length piece (yes, we pay our writers!)
