Big Wins for Downtown LA and The Social District

Last week was the culmination of many years of work, patience, and persistence. Collectively we secured a monumental win for Downtown Los Angeles and the Social District. While the City Council’s commitment to move forward with modernizing and expanding the Convention Center is a huge win, the pending arrival of destination grocery store Erewhon in 2027, is the status symbol we’ve all been striving for. 

Perhaps it was the other way around, but it must be no coincidence that the public sector’s nearly $3 billion investment into Downtown, followed the lead of the private sector grocery store chain securing a site on the corner of Hill and Olympic to build its new store. Or maybe it was the rapidly growing residential population and the prospect of $15 billion in economic output generated by the Convention Center expansion that finally piqued enough interest from the upscale chain. 

Either way, it feels good to have momentum at our backs! Hope feels quantifiably better than anxiety. To an optimist, this is more impactful than any legacy businesses changing management. These new investments are preludes to a redemption story about the future of Downtown LA. I’m grateful to Mayor Bass, Councilmember Jurado, their colleagues, and city staff for finding a way forward and onward.

I’m grateful to the business, labor, and community leaders who showed up at every community meeting advocating for a once in a generation investment in growing our economy. And I’m grateful to the executives at Erewhon for paying attention to our potential and bringing their giant-sized strawberries and influencer craved smoothies to a part of DTLA that already has the best fried chicken and donuts just across Olympic, at Duchess. 

Knowing we can yield the power of both effective organizing to secure our tourism and hospitality industry and wish casting to conjure a prized retailer, it’s important that we use our newfound powers to address other challenges that lay ahead.  

The same spells, data, persistence, magic, and collective pressures are needed to solve our Oceanwide problem. Our collective will is needed to make consistent progress on homelessness and public safety. And prayer and political capital need to be wielded intentionally to make sure we have a bureaucratic permitting process in place that is the fastest and most efficient in North America. Achieving the latter would for sure be counted as miracle in any leader’s petition for sainthood.  

My first presentation to the Board of Directors that leads our business improvement district was titled, “a Presentation of the Possibilities.” I’m incredibly proud that we’ve checked a few items from that presentation as well as our community driven strategic plan. But what I’m most excited about is the next version of that slideshow; what as a community we aspire to in our next strategic plan. 

It feels good to not only have momentum at our backs, but knowing we got here standing shoulder to shoulder, and together we are fully focused on the horizon ahead: to Erewhon, and beyond!