The vision for Runway’s $9.1-million makeover, which is expected to be completed early next year, is coming from architects Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph, principals of cheeky L.A architecture firm Design, Bitches. Still, the scheme might work in Playa del Rey, he said. “After density and excitement is there, then you close the street,” Leinberger said. Street closures that are most likely to succeed take place on blocks where there are already active stores and restaurants, preferably supported by people who live upstairs or nearby. (Ellis Simani / was considered a silver bullet for instant urbanity, but mostly it put a bullet through the head of those main streets,” said Leinberger, a professor at the George Washington School of Business. Real estate analyst Christopher Leinberger said that while removing cars on ailing main streets can encourage more foot traffic, it failed to spur business growth in most of the roughly 200 American cities that tried doing it during the latter decades of the 20th century. The Promenade, in fact, has been partially closed to traffic as far back as 1965 and it only really flourished in the 1990s as part of a downtown redevelopment program. In Los Angeles, people might perceive closed streets as a panacea for salvaging underperforming retail strips because of the success of the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, but that is not necessarily so. “When you make it easy for people to walk around, sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee or eat something, it’s just so inviting.”
“The more pedestrians we can get, the more eyes we have on the Studio and all the retail we have here,” Hirsch-Solomon said. Lisa Hirsch-Solomon, founder of fitness class center the Studio (MDR), is a supporter of permanently halting through-traffic in part because she believes the farmers markets have been good for her business. They have made the weekly farmer’s market a hit, helping it draw some 3,000 people, according to DJM.
There is already an indication that closing off the streets resonates with the population, which tends to skew younger, with the largest age group being people in their early 30s, many of whom are starting families. Tenants include Google, Facebook, Belkin and Sony, making it part of the coastal “Silicon Beach” strip of communities that begins north at Santa Monica. The first residents arrived in Playa Vista in 2002 and it already is home to 6,000 residences and 9 million square feet of offices. The complex was planned to be the “downtown” of Playa Vista, a coastal community near Marina del Rey built last decade on land where mid-20th century business mogul Howard Hughes ran his aviation empire.
0 kommentar(er)
