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NICK’S VIEW - Abandoned! That is what happened to Downtown Los Angeles. The city’s famous center is steadily and rapidly deteriorating as mass business closures, severe street disorder, and a shrinking daytime population combine into a broader urban breakdown.
Downtown LA ranked one of the deadest downtowns in the world. Out of 75 global cities, LA ranked 20th lowest worldwide and 11th lowest among 34 US cities for downtown vibrancy.
The scale of downtown's decline can be inferred from the available evidence, even though the city does not maintain comprehensive records of neighborhood business closures. The number of closures certainly reaches into the thousands. At the same time, downtown office vacancy rates have climbed to nearly 35 percent, among the highest in the nation, while widespread retail closures underscore the steady disappearance of the private and public sector workers and customers who once sustained the area's economy.
City Hall has failed to confront this deepening decline with the urgency it demands. Despite the mounting economic and community impacts, local officials have not made this sector a true priority. There has been no meaningful commitment to the resources, enforcement, or coordinated action needed to restore the city's economic heart. Without decisive leadership and immediate action, the decline will continue, businesses will keep closing, and the damage to the city's economic base and future will only grow.
Most disturbing is the fact that City Hall’s own decision to hand much of downtown’s management to a Business Improvement District (BID) was a key factor for this misfortune. In effect, the city shifted core responsibilities — safety, cleanliness, and public-space oversight — to the BID.
A Business Improvement District exists because it is authorized by state law and created by city government. It is a private, property-owner-funded organization legally charged with protecting property values, business interests, and commercial stability within its boundaries.
Although a BID is formed through a legally defined democratic process, its practical power structure is not democratic. Decision‑making is dominated by property owners rather than the broader public.
It is funded through a legally mandated assessment on parcels inside the district, and property owners pay this assessment in addition to normal property taxes. Owners of parcels inside the boundary must pay, even those who voted against the BID formation. There are also grants, private contributions, and occasional special levies — all governed by local laws to ensure transparency and accountability. The city gathers the money through its tax or assessment system and then transfers the funds to the BID’s nonprofit operator.
Then, of course, there is the Central City Association (CCA), the most powerful and politically influential business organization in Los Angeles. Its membership includes many of the city's largest employers, commercial property owners, lobbyists, real estate developers, major financial institutions, large construction and international engineering firms, prominent law firms representing multinational corporations and public agencies, out of state institutions and corporate government and public affairs executives.
Collectively, these interests wield extraordinary influence over public policy, land-use decisions, and downtown development. Through its advocacy, political relationships, and policy agenda, the CCA helps shape the priorities of City Hall and the direction of Los Angeles' economic development and redevelopment policies.
The interconnections among the City Council, CCA and Tourism interests have been investigated previously by Noah Goldberg and the LA Times, clearly showing how special interests are selectively intertwined, while the interests of small businesses and entrepreneurs are ignored.
While CCA collaborates with the downtown BID, it is really the voice of policy for the area while the improvement district is the operational segment in cleanup, security, and maintenance. In fact, policy briefings are often convened by CCA with invitations extended to BID executives.
CCA is undoubtedly the key conduit to City Hall, helping influence who wins City Hall seats.
But CCA has ignored the decay of downtown. For example, it lobbied for the expansion of the Convention Center despite warning from the City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo that the city`s general fund would need to allocate an average of $111 million per year through 2058 to pay for the expansion. In 2031 for example, an estimated $167 million in taxpayers' funds would go toward the Convention Center`s debt and operations.
The biggest beneficiary of this deal is a giant multinational company and influential member of CCA.
CCA has been alarmingly quiet about the City Council’s ill-conceived proposal to limit its weekly meetings to one day, obviously because it acts as part of the establishment on issues confronting the City. With certainty, the council’s curtailed meetings will further deteriorate downtown.
While both the CCA and BID expand their hold on City Hall, small businesses, restaurants, and bars are closing, and the pedestrian traffic has been acutely diminished. Even City Hall resembles a morgue. In the "heydays", City Hall was bursting with activity and energy. Businesspersons, homeowner groups, members of civic organizations, visiting schoolchildren, lobbyists, and city employees among many others filled the corridors and the Chambers, spilling into the streets supporting small businesses, coffee shops, restaurants and bars, day and night. Individuals from out- of - state with issues before the council supported the hospitality industry.
Further, vandalism, assaults and robberies downtown have driven businesses out, and a noticeable lack of police presence makes people reluctant to return despite LAPD`s claim that crime is down.
If any of our city leaders had read the book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs, they would have learned of the "eyes on the street" theory, which hypothesizes that the presence of people in public space deters crime. Environmental psychologists call this "natural surveillance,” people organically observe their surroundings. A criminal who thinks he will be seen should be less inclined to offense. A street full of life and activity has many natural observers, multiplying this effect.
The basic theory is this: "A well-used city street is apt to be safe street. A deserted city street is apt to be unsafe
However, there would be a positive and immediate effect, if the mayor were to issue a directive requiring all city employees return every day to their office desks. The benefits of such action would not only support the downtown economy, but it would provide a sense of safety and security in the streets and public spaces. That, of course, would require leadership and fortitude to stand up to special interests.
The problem, however, runs deeper and is even more troubling. In the absence of meaningful leadership from City Hall, the BID has increasingly prioritized its own institutional interests over the broader public good. Rather than serving the community, it has become primarily focused on protecting itself, while property owners use the process to safeguard their own fiscal interests.
Consequently, the BID has shifted into a self-preservation mode, prioritizing its members’ concerns over downtown’s broader needs. BID formation and board elections use property-weighted voting. More votes are given to those with valuable land or special assessments. Therefore, a handful of major commercial landlords or corporate entities can easily outvote dozens of small business owners and turn their backs to thousands of local residents.
For tenants and residents, there is no vote and no representation on the board that sets security and public-space policies for their own neighborhood. According to a study by the University of California, Berkeley, BID security personnel frequently displace homeless individuals beyond district boundaries into adjacent neighborhoods without connecting them to city or county social services.
A BID is intended to supplement basic municipal services, not replace them. While taxpayers fund essential services such as road repairs, street lighting, and emergency response, improvement districts use assessment revenues to provide additional amenities, including beautification projects, private security patrols, and district branding and marketing.
Neighborhoods outside BID boundaries, particularly lower-income communities, receive only the standard level of city services. The result is a widening visual and economic divide between Los Angeles neighborhoods, as areas with BIDs benefit from enhanced public investments that others do not.
Of course, beautification programs undertaken by Business Improvement Districts produce visible physical improvements that make commercial corridors feel cleaner, safer, more attractive, and more inviting to customers, residents, and investors. But these improvements often come with a significant downside: commercial displacement. Through these programs property values rise, commercial rents follow, placing intense financial pressure on small, neighborhood-serving businesses and forcing many to close or move out.
Business Improvement Districts exercise public taxing authority without meaningful democratic oversight, and their institutional imperative to protect and advance their own interests often conflicts with the broader goals of equitable citywide governance. The result is a system in which public power is increasingly leveraged to create private commercial value, while accountability to the communities most affected remains limited. This imbalance raises fundamental questions about representation, transparency, and whether the public interest is truly being served.
In California there is no statutory cap on how much a commercial landlord can increase rent when a lease comes up for renewal. Without legal protection from a sudden spike in rents or operating costs, small business owners shut down.
In Los Angeles, the improvement district is strong though direct and continuous lobbying the City Council on land-use regulations, anti-camping ordinances, vendor regulations, and zoning changes. With direct access to department heads, they function as concentrated lobbying blocks, often drowning out the voices of neighborhood councils and resident associations.
Can Los Angeles Downtown be saved? Of course, if City Hall were to change the governance structure for downtown and dynamically intervenes with newer effective policies and public investment.
City Hall must reclaim responsibility for neighborhood revitalization and return it to municipal and genuinely community-based institutions. Decision-making authority should rest with public bodies that are accountable to all residents, not with organizations and associations dominated by property owners and special interests. The future of Los Angeles neighborhoods should be shaped by community needs, democratic representation, and the public interest—not by the financial priorities of a narrow group.
Joel Kotkin, presidential fellow for urban futures at Chapman University, wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "So how do city centers, including in Los Angeles, avoid what the New York Times bleakly calls an "urban doom loop"? The key lies in reinventing themselves as what H.G.Wells predicted 120 years ago as "essentially a bazaar, a great gallery of shops and places of concourse and rendezvous"
If the Business Improvement District model is to remain, it must be fundamentally reformed. The city should adopt enabling legislation that limits BID authority by capping budgets, restricting eligible expenditures, requiring city approval for major projects, mandating regular independent audits, and guaranteeing meaningful community representation on governing boards. A BID should function as a partner to local government—not as the primary driver of neighborhood policy, investment, and public-space management.
The city must recognize that downtown is a public asset, not a privatized commercial zone. It must immediately reclaim its leadership role by restoring the community's voice in neighborhood governance, strengthening baseline municipal services, directing grants and economic development through City-led initiatives, and reducing the dominance of lobbying organizations while preserving functions that demonstrably serve the public interest. The Central City Association and the Business Improvement District should no longer set the agenda for downtown. That responsibility belongs to democratically accountable public institutions acting on behalf of all residents, workers, businesses, and visitors. We are running out of time. Two years until the LA 2028 Olympics. What image is our beloved Los Angeles is going to present to the world?
Kotkin claims "LA`s decline is not just economic but also social and civic"
I am committed to Los Angeles maintaining its status as a great global city and strengthening the democratic principles on which its future depends. Property owners have every right to own, manage, and protect their investments. Those rights, however, do not include the authority to control public policy or govern the neighborhoods they share with others. In a democratic society, public decisions must be made through accountable public institutions and in the interest of the entire community—not by virtue of property ownership.--
(Nick Patsaouras is an electrical engineer, civic leader, and a longtime public advocate. He ran for Mayor in 1993 with a focus on rebuilding L.A. through transportation after the 1992 civil unrest. He has served on major public boards, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Metro, and the Board of Zoning Appeals, helping guide infrastructure and planning policy in Los Angeles. He is the author of the book "The Making of Modern Los Angeles.")
