A Recap of The Annual Meeting

The Social District’s Annual Meeting has become an opportunity for us to gather in community, hear from leaders, celebrate stakeholders, and reflect on the work we’ve done, while looking ahead to what more we can do, and will do.  Three years ago, my first annual meeting was held at our office.  We ordered wine and cheese from Ralph’s, 11 people showed up, and I introduced myself as the new guy before boarding a plane later that night back to Vancouver and my family for the weekend. 

In the following years I hope we’ve gotten a little better at the planning and production of it all.  I’m certainly grateful for all the work our team does to put on a show that strives to be more personal than pretentious, while still being professional and hopefully polished. This year’s event reached capacity with over 200 RSVPs.  We didn’t plan for there to be stormy weather, but seeing people trickle in from the deluge was evidence of how much people care about the work we’re doing in our district.   

The draw of the night for most who braved the rain, was our conversation with Paul Krekorian – Executive Director of the Office of Major Events, and our headline conversation with Rick Caruso – civic leader, developer, and philanthropist.  But the highlight of any annual meeting for me is having the opportunity to present our Spotlight Awards to a diverse group of community stakeholders who each contribute daily to our district.  This year’s awards were presented to Devon Glass – a Team Leader of our public safety ambassadors, Sergeant Gordon Helper of the LAPD Central Division, Doane Liu – the City of Los Angeles’ Chief Tourism Officer, and Stephanie Lara – the Store Manager of the Starbucks on 11th and Grand.  I was also able to honor the chairmanship, and friendship, of Dave Gordon, who has reached the end of his term as a board member, while graciously agreeing to help us establish our new Social District Foundation as the founding chair. 

Quantifying what we do as a business improvement district isn’t always easy. And neither is the work.  But the numbers are an important aspect of any annual meeting. This year, we’ve hung 75 banners, installed 84 planters, upgraded 100 garbage cans, provided 185 safe walks, given away 200 turkeys, removed 338 bulky items, responded to 871 calls for service, performed 2123 welfare checks, removed 70, 646 square feet of graffiti, disposed of 535,050 pounds of trash, and pressure washed 948,668 square feet of sidewalk. 

To start the year, we purchased meals from local restaurants during the wildfires and gave them away to first responders and families in need. And later in the summer, when our community suffered a 30% decline in visitors during the curfew and protests in response to ICE raids, we created a program overnight to support local businesses and our community. We gave away 100 cocktails at Bar Moxy, 100 lattes at Ideology, 100 Mezcals at Culturas, 100 breakfast sandwiches at Muffin Can Stop Us, 100 beers at 33 Taps, 100 happy hour drinks at Prank Bar, 100 donuts at Duchess, 100 specialty drinks at Virtu Coffee, and 100 more beers at Audio Graph! 

This Fall, several years of advocacy paid off in getting a commitment to renovating and expanding the convention center.  This project will result in 2600 incremental jobs, supporting $6.0 Billion in additional labor income, and add nearly $9.0 billion to local GDP and more than $14.9 billion in economic output across the City of Los Angeles. The millions of additional visitors to our district will have a significant impact on our ability to retain, support, and attract businesses. 

Not everything we do is quantifiable, but I am proud of the numbers our team puts up!  

Celebrating our 2nd anniversary of our weekly farmers’ market or supporting the South Park Neighborhood Association’s annual Taste of South Park event, has an impact to individuals and families that live in our district that goes beyond a straightforward return on investment.  Launching our People Lead the Way campaign on our utility boxes this year, significantly upgrading our website, and other projects – small and large – will sometimes go unrecognized even though they’re important, necessary, and worth the time our team spent to execute them. 

An Annual Meeting is an opportunity to reflect on a job hopefully well done, while having conversations and answering questions about the work that still beguiles us and providing clarity on challenges and opportunities that are ahead.  It was great to hear from Krekorian about the opportunity for the Olympics to be a catalyst for downtown revitalization and improvements to Pico Station. It was great to hear from Caruso his views on how leadership can intervene in solving many of our issues from street disorder to retail vacancy and housing production.  It’s clear that there are leaders who care about downtown as much as we do and are invested in the work we have ahead of us. 

Now that this year’s annual meeting is in the books, we start to look ahead and script in advance our successes for next year.  We also make space for the unpredictable that is so frequently occurring these days that it’s expected and therefore properly accounted for as we prepare for whatever may come, and likely will.  I’m optimistic that it will mostly be positive, and that our momentum will continue.  If you were able to brave the storm last week and attend our annual meeting, or whether you’ve just been braving the temperamental vibes of downtown, in this week of gratitude, thank you for continuing to be a part of this community, supporting our ambassadors and clean team members, and always pushing us to do more.      

And don’t forget to RSVP for next year’s annual meeting early.  It will definitely sell out again.  And you will definitely want to be there.