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When James Sears returned to work at the Los Angeles Mall in the fall of 2022, he hoped he wouldn’t be alone. He had been away from his shoe repair shop for a year and a half.
The Civic Center shopping mall across from City Hall was a wasteland, the aisles deserted and the food court and most restaurants locked or boarded up. The landscape was reduced to dirt, except for a few palms and other trees. The fountain was dry.
Mr. Sears, 81, tried to hold on. He dusted off the counter and chairs. He cleaned the area where the water leaked and waited. But no one came. One day, he posted a handwritten note and gently closed the iron gate.
closed
We will reopen once people start wearing shoes.
Sears’ decision reflects a truth in downtown Los Angeles that is forcing small businesses, landlords and property managers to think seriously about the future. Traditional uses of the space are no longer viable, as the building remains vacant and the storefront remains boarded up.
James Sears is inside a shoe repair shop on Flower Street in the financial district. Sears also had a shoe repair shop in the Los Angeles Mall across from City Hall, but it is now closed.
Sears repairs heels in his store.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles Mall is unique in both design and ownership. The building is below street level and sits in two sunken courtyards connected by a wide tunnel beneath Temple Street, where the city of Los Angeles once relied on revenue from tenants like Sears. Owned and managed by
Sears stopped paying rent and the city forgave his debt, but the Department of Water and Power did not. The amount of past due utility bills is approximately $4,000.
Without any activity, time stands still in his shop. There are city awards and a photo of her father on the wall, as well as a shoe shine shelf, shoe laces and an empty gumball machine.
The city is “welcome to do what it wants,” he said. “But what are they going to do?”
The city is grappling with that problem, but it’s not just the Sears store, it’s the Civic Center, which is home to the mall and about 12 blocks surrounding City Hall, including the courthouse, police department, sheriff’s headquarters, city transportation, records and licensing offices, and more. It also relates to the center.
“The pandemic has changed a lot of things related to jobs in the City of Los Angeles,” said Blair Miller, principal project coordinator for the Los Angeles Department of Economic and Workforce Development. “The way we work may continue to change compared to before the pandemic.”
“Nothing has changed except that it has become obsolete. It still works, it’s just not as popular.”
— John Shepherd, former senior real estate official for the City of Los Angeles, at the Los Angeles Mall
A man eats lunch at a deserted Los Angeles shopping mall.
Mr. Miller also leads the agency’s real estate group, which, at the request of the City Council, is responsible for evaluating surplus and underutilized properties for potential redevelopment.
Once bustling with city employees and residents needing city services, these few blocks in the shadow of City Hall have become deserted with work-from-home options and online access to city departments. . The customers who supported the mall are almost gone, and few believe they will return.
“Before, you couldn’t walk there without bumping into someone,” Sears said. “It was so crowded.”
Sears’ father, David, opened the store in 1987 for his son to run. It was the family’s second shoe repair shop. The city charged about $800 in rent, and in good years Sears earned up to $90,000 after expenses.
The Sears shoe repair store in the Los Angeles Mall remains closed.
Sears remembers when Tom Bradley and later Richard Riordan passed by, and when then-LAPD Chief William Bratton needed repairs. He said business first started to decline when a longtime customer left the company and there was no one to replace him.
Now, since the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for office space has decreased and the need for housing has increased, so the city is considering whether the Los Angeles Mall and surrounding real estate could be repurposed. You might be thinking of getting started. It’s a way to revitalize the whole area,” Miller said.
Proposals to redevelop the Civic Center date back nearly 30 years, but the closure of the Parker Center, the former Los Angeles Police Department headquarters, in 2013 led to new office and apartment buildings connected by a series of paseos to the east. , ambitious plans for retail space were born. Little Tokyo.
The plan, announced in 2017, was shelved just before the pandemic, a fortuitous turning point that allowed planners to adapt to a radically different city.
The Los Angeles Mall in downtown is almost completely destroyed.
Miller said a new report and analysis will be presented to city council early next year.
Opened in 1975, this mall was the crown jewel of the Civic Center.
The nearly two-block-long mall between First Street and the 101 Freeway will take $70 million and 17 years to complete as part of an ambitious overhaul that includes the construction of an 18-story City Hall East building. It took a month.
Although critics at the time argued that a city-owned and operated shopping mall would never work, the Los Angeles Mall opened at nearly 80% occupancy.
Its success was due not only to the number of employees working at the Civic Center (36,000, second only to Washington, D.C.), but also to the details put into attracting shoppers. Artists were commissioned to design sculptures and water features. The subtropical landscaping cost more than $6 million.
John Shepherd, a former senior real estate official for the city of Los Angeles, stands in the street-level courtyard above the Los Angeles Mall.
John Shepherd, a retired senior real estate manager for the city of Los Angeles, was drawn to the mall after moving to Los Angeles from Washington, D.C., about 40 years ago.
A fountain was flowing. At lunchtime, street musicians performed for the crowd, and on holidays the parapets were lit with lights.
“Nothing has changed except that it has become obsolete,” he says. “It’s still working, it’s just not as widespread.”
The mall is an elegy to the way downtown Los Angeles was imagined by mid-20th century politicians and progressives. It is a city with a vibrant centre, accessible by motorway and centered around a city hall with an encomium above the entrance celebrating the common good.
Time stands still on the dial of an antique clock placed in the courtyard. The towering Triforium, a work of art that brings music and light to public spaces, is serene. Due to the drought, palm trees are dying and escalators are not working.
Some customers are still coming down the stairs. At lunchtime, Rafik Karim is doing a brisk business at the Lotto Convenience Store, whose windows are covered with announcements of “big winners.” For those who purchase a scratcher, happily wave your hand over the card to wish them luck.
Karim has worked there for 15 years, cutting back on his hours as the number of customers slowed. By mid-afternoon, we are often ready to close up shop.
The Mediterranean restaurant is one of the few remaining in the Los Angeles Mall.
Bob’s Big Boy, now California Pita, held its grand opening in 2007 and received an award from then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Manager Manuel Alvear, 38, has worked here for six years. He wants parking to be cheaper and the city to open restrooms for people living on the streets, who often sleep on benches.
The city’s approach to vacant land is reuse. The children’s museum is now a temporary shelter for the homeless. CVS is now a storage facility. The Hallmark store houses the city’s Civil Rights, Human Rights and Equity Department.
Other city departments, such as the Postal Service, Moving Services and the City Employees Welfare Association, use former storefronts to offer a glimpse of what the future holds.
“We are evaluating whether it is financially possible to convert some of the other space into hotel space for city employees,” said Yolanda Chavez, assistant city administrator.
Hotel accommodations could better adapt to “the new world in which we work” if employees had a common work space rather than dedicated desks, she said.
The city plans to issue a work-from-home policy soon. Once departments have adjusted their schedules, Chavez said her team will reallocate office space within the mall.
The city is aiming to revitalize the Los Angeles Mall.
Some city employees work in rented buildings throughout downtown. Malls offer an opportunity to reduce that expense.
“We’re trying to maximize the use of urban space so that we don’t have to pay private rent,” Chavez said.
The city is asking even bigger questions about its civic center as it restructures its workforce. Given Los Angeles’ housing crisis, the first impulse may be to build more housing, followed by commercial and retail development, but there are other factors to consider, Miller said.
Businesses like Sears Shoe Repair could gain more customers if city workers returned to the Civic Center. But the Civic Center is more than just a commercial destination. It is an expression of how civic leaders and citizens construct a city’s identity.
Miller said establishing that identity today is a “balancing act.”
“We need to look at what makes for effective city government in terms of access to public services, interaction of city staff, and building cross-sectoral relationships and knowledge,” she said. “Once you’ve identified that, you have to ask yourself: How will your space work with that?”
Meanwhile, Sears has dismissed the idea of retirement and continues to work every day at the store his father opened on Flower Street in the financial district in 1973. Business is good there, he said.
Whatever the city’s plans are, he wants to keep his store within the Civic Center and move to street level where more customers can find him once he “starts to put on his shoes again.” There is.
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