From Espresso to Economic Impact

Raise your hand if you’re a Sabrina Carpenter fan?  

If you’re a fan, like me, you know that the barely five feet tall GRAMMY award winner has spent a lot of time in the Social District.  She’s performed for GRAMMY Museum members on multiple occasions at the museum’s Clive Davis Theatre, captivated on stage and broadcast live to the world from the GRAMMY Awards, and finished up her Short n’ Sweet Tour in the same building – Crypto.com Arena. 

And while I can neither confirm nor deny that her hit song Espresso was inspired by our numerous and growing number of coffee shops, I can tell you that November 23rd – which was the 2nd day of the LA Auto Show, and the last day of Sabrina’s North American tour – was the top spending day in the Social District.  According to data provided through our new partnership with Datafy, an estimated $1,195,821 was spent in the Social District that Sunday. 

This data is music to my ears! And as LA LIVE prepares to host the GRAMMY Awards in less than 3 weeks, we’re preparing for visitation, spending, and demographic data to make up the award-winning soundtrack of our 2026. There’s a powerful narrative of opportunity in our district, and we hope understanding the flow of people and dollars allows us to better realize the potential by being clear about the challenges.  

We’re excited that we will be able to share not just how much we’ve pressure washed (over 948k square feet), how much trash we’ve disposed of (over 535k pounds), and how many safe walks we’ve escorted residents on (over 300), but through this partnership we’ll also be able to quantify the economic impact of Lakers and Kings games, hosting large conventions, and putting on world class concerts. We’ll also be able to look backwards at data to fully understand the impact of externalities like last year’s wildfires, ICE raids, or even the Clippers moving to Inglewood and taking with them 41 days of regional visitation away from our neighborhood. 

In the aggregate, the data tells us that over the last year, over 54% of the visitors to the district come from 1 or 2 person households. Just under 10% of visitors are between the ages 16 – 24.  But this is where data can be the perfect needle drop. Fader Magazine says a needle drop acts as a highlighter. When a song is played at a specific moment in a movie or TV show, it draws big, bold colors around the scene, giving it outsized importance in the production’s broader context.  

We don’t see any real impact from office visitation in the data; the top 3 spending days are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  Less than 30% of visitors go south of Pico. Most visitors, nearly 65%, never cross Figueroa.   

And if I only could
I'd make a deal with God
And I'd get Him to swap our places
Be runnin' up that road
Be runnin' up that hill
Be runnin' up that building
Say, if I only could… 

But I digress, almost losing the Sabrina Carpenter of it all in the desperation of Kate Bush.  Understanding economic and visitation data is only part of what we’ll be doing this year.  We’ll be able to identify and target marketing campaigns at individuals entering or leaving the district – hopefully persuading them to consider spending more time (and money) in the district they’ve yet to fully explore. And we’ll be able to track to see if it was effective and adjust accordingly. We can target workers coming into DTLA with messaging about the joys of living a few blocks from the office. My favorite needle drop from the movie Office Spacewould be most appropriate, except damn it feels good to be a gangsta when you’re NOT stuck in rush hour traffic after completing all those TPS reports. 

This year, our team will be doing a monthly visitation and spending download on our social media, which coincidentally saw an increase of 88k views last month during our holiday giveaway campaign to support neighborhood businesses.  And over the next several months, we’ll be launching multiple projects that leverage this data in meaningful ways that add value to our building owners, businesses, and prospective investors. Like Sabrina Carpenter’s 2025 Kids Choice Award for Favorite Song, this is just a Taste of what’s ahead: short and sweet, like Espresso.