Smart Meetings

Who would have guessed 10 years ago—or even five—that downtown Los Angeles would become one of the city’s most vibrant, dynamic areas? An area where billion-dollar projects are not pie-in-the-sky? Where subways and trains are replacing cars, and condos are replacing parking lots? (In fact, according to recent figures, by 2008 the area will count 60,000 residents downtown.)

An area where nightlife and entertainment will reign 24/7? And one where the answer to the perennial meeting attendee question, “What’s there to do now?” will be “Plenty.” The resurgence of this inner core is taking more than the gross national product of some small countries; of course, it has also taken vision and collaboration, by the city, the hospitality industry (including hotels, which are stepping up to the plate with multimillion-dollar renovations, and the convention and visitors bureau), developers, investors, neighborhoods that have created business improvement districts and residents.

It also plays to the city’s existing strengths: a gorgeous climate with warm sunny days, cool nights and little rain; old office buildings and warehouses ripe for renovation; intriguing ethnic and business districts, from Chinatown and Little Tokyo to the Jewelry and Fashion centers; and of course, the film industry. Where else are the streets washed for car commercials, can City Hall star as the Daily Planet newspaper (The Adventures of Superman), or your dinner server be an out-of-work actor or director?

The revitalization, which began with the opening of Staples Center in 1999, is well on the way to fruition, with many projects seeing completion in the next year or two. In the meantime, the city is bustling and the vibe is definitely “hip.” “We just have to get planners here for a site, and we’ve got them,” says Mark S. Liberman, president and CEO of LA INC. The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Until your site visit, here is a preview of the new features, coming attractions and residual attractions.

LA LIVE
If one project could be considered the future pulse of the “new” downtown, it would be LA Live, a 4-million-square-foot, $2.5-billion AEG development adjacent to Staples Center and the Los Angeles Convention Center. This soon-to-be hotspot will be a hub for entertainment from the Nokia Theatre Los Angeles, a 7,100-seat live theater opening this fall, to the Club Nokia, a 2,500-capacity live music venue. (Its 40,000-square-foot plaza will be ideal for special events.)

Integral parts of the complex are the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels, with more than 100,000 sq. ft. of flexible meeting space, including the largest ballroom in Southern California and 1,000 guest rooms.
Add in the interactive GRAMMY museum, 9–12 restaurants and an ESPN Zone, and the action won’t stop.
“LA Live is changing the landscape of the city,” says Carol Martinez, associate vice president, media relations and communications for LA INC.

GRAND AVENUE
To put it simply, Grand Avenue has become “grand.” A favorite boulevard for filming car commercials, it is the heart of the city’s cultural activities, from contemporary art to classical music and live theater.
The main building of the Museum of Contemporary Art is located in the California Plaza Center, an 11.5-acre mixed-use area that’s the scene of open-air concerts and museum-related festivities. Nearby is an outdoor stage surrounded by fountains that serves as home to Grand Performances, Southern California’s largest presenter of free performing arts, and The Colburn School, a private arts school with indoor and outdoor event space open to the public.

A short distance away is the Music Center, where the architecturally striking Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall is home to the L.A. Philharmonic and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to the Los Angeles Opera. They’re joined by the Mark Taper Forum and Ahmanson Theatre for an unbeatable source of top-tier entertainment. (In fact, it’s said that L.A. has more live theater than even New York or London, due to the large number of 99-seat non-Equity houses—not surprising with the town’s plethora of actors, directors and set designers.)

Joining the two areas is another of downtown’s major developments, the $2-billion Grand Avenue Project, which broke ground in December and will be completed in three phases. This mega-deal is designed to complement the Music Center in phase one with an inviting, 16-acre park, a 275-room Mandarin Oriental hotel, plus condos, retail and entertainment (phase two and three are primarily residential and retail).

NEIGHBORHOODS
For history—and a great margarita—head for Olvera Street, a Mexican-style, open-air marketplace that shelters the Avila Adobe, the city’s oldest surviving building. The narrow street, filled with stalls selling everything from guitars to leather goods and pottery, is lined by restaurants, many with outdoor seating.

You can find the traditional Chinatown, founded in 1938, among the crowded 15-block area filled with apothecaries, food stalls, fresh produce markets and restaurants like Chow Fun. But the revitalization of L.A. has also brought new blood to this venerable area, with contemporary art galleries, accessory shops and a cutting-edge vibe.
Bargain hunters need to know only two phrases: “Santee Alley” and “St. Vincent’s.” Santee Alley is the hub of the Fashion District, which spans a 90-block area chock-a-block with retailers and wholesalers in the West’s largest garment district. (There’s even a search engine on the Web site where you can enter what you’re looking for, and they’ll supply the source.)

St. Vincent’s is equally famous in the Jewelry District, the second largest district of its type in the world. Shop here or throughout the area, with more than 5,000 shops, for wholesale prices on precious gems, watches, platinum, gold, silver, diamonds, pearls and all types of fine jewelry. Savings are said to be 40-70 percent off retail.

GETTING AROUND
While downtown is becoming more pedestrian-friendly, a good way to get around sans automobile during the
day is DASH Downtown, a local system that costs 25 cents (look for the white-and-blue bus). Metro Rail’s Blue and Red lines (mta.-net) make numerous stops through downtown’s core, including South Park (near the convention center and the upcoming LA Live), the Financial District, the Civic Center and
Union Station.
    
MEETING VENUES
With its signature towers and emerald-green glass facade, the city-owned Los Angeles Convention Center is an easily recognizable landmark. Located on 54 acres in the South Park district, it serves as L.A.’s primary meeting site, with 922,000 sq. ft. of meeting and event space. The largest of its four halls, South Hall, has 346,890 sq ft. of exhibit space; the second largest, West Hall, offers 210,685.

The glass-and-steel, modernist structure, with natural light streaming into its interior, continues to be a trendsetter long after its original construction. As a leader in environmentally friendly programs, it’s the largest solar energy-generating convention center in North America and diverts or recycles 1.2 million pounds of materials a year—a number that’s growing.

LACC is on the forefront of technology as well, according to Pouria Abbassi, P.E. interim general manager of the center. It recently completed the final phase of a major enhancement that converted its data backbone to a one gigabit single mode fiber optic network (which, in non-tech terms, means planners and exhibitors can transmit data at a speed 10 times faster than the prior system, with more reliability, easier service installation and higher bandwidth capacity). There’s also new WiFi help desks for those of us who may require additional technical support.  
Further easing the convention process are 6,000 parking spaces, airline baggage check-in and boarding passes, and event-specific Flyaway bus service direct to LAX.

UNIQUE VENUES
As you’d expect, there is no lack of unique or creative venues in this town. With the Oscars still fresh in our minds, the glamorous Kodak Theatre, part of Hollywood & Highland, will delight the most jaded of your attendees. Roll out a red carpet, sequester your VIPs in the George Eastman Room, a private room with vision glass that changes so you can see out, but no one can see in, and join companies like Mercedes-Benz, which rented the facility for a product launch, and Sebastian, which held a runway show. It’s also possible to take out the first tier of seats for table set-up.

Los Angeles Center Studios, in the former Unocal building, rents out its six 18,000-square-foot sound stages, a 400-seat theater and outdoor decks with views of the city—but only for three months out, due to television filming. Speaking of which, you can either try to secure tickets to your favorite TV shows way ahead of time, or try Audiences Unlimited Inc., a company that distributes free studio audience tickets for scores of major network and cable shows, plus special events and award shows (see their Web site for a list of the current television shows and awards events they represent).

Another option is The Jim Hensen Company, housed in the former Charlie Chaplin studios (a statue of Kermit the Frog by the entrance is the giveaway). The off-beat property is laid out like a village, with a center courtyard surrounded by offices, workshops, recording studios and sound stages. The 8,000-square-foot sound stage can be rented for up to 400 guests, and outdoor events can be held in the courtyard. In the back, a rustic building called “The Barn”—Chaplin’s carpenter shop—is where the Henson puppets are created, both manually and digitally. In fact, the Henson Digital Performance System technology allows animated characters to interact live with event guests (characters can even pop up in your PowerPoint presentation, or the Henson puppeteers will create a character who looks just like your CEO—what fun you could have with that!).

Downtown’s 1893 Bradbury Building, the area’s oldest commercial building, is an architectural treasure more easily appreciated for its interior (you may be familiar with it from the film Blade Runner). The five-story structure features a central courtyard that floods with natural light from the glass-roofed skylight, ornately designed wrought-iron railings, bird-cage elevators and geometric-patterned staircases.

Operating out of the Bradbury Building—and indicative of the new downtown thrust—is Red Line Tours, the largest walking tour company in the country. The seven-year-old company offers three primary tours—historic downtown, modern downtown and Hollywood—but founder Tony Hoover says he’ll customize tours for planners. With seven guides, the tours can accommodate large groups, such as a recent AARP convention that booked 1,000 people.

But this is L.A., after all, and there’s no finer paen to Angelenos’ favorite mode of transportation than the Petersen Automotive Museum, with fascinating exhibits and 60,000 sq. ft. of event space, including an 18,000-square-foot Pavilion, a clear-span, tent-like structure). “The most popular combination is to have cocktails on the second level, where our Grand Salon and Hollywood Cars and Stars Exhibit are, and then move into our Pavilion tent for dinner, dancing and live entertainment,” says Kari Lusti, CMP, director of special event sales for the museum.
Speaking of transportation, for a truly unique and unexpected venue, check out the Caltrans District 7 Headquarters building (213-897-3656). Its avant garde design, built in 2004 with only those materials used in highway construction, has been a source of controversy, but the sheltered outdoor amphitheater-like terrace and plaza can be booked for events after business hours for groups up to 1,000.

In close proximity to all the Hollywood hotspots is the Wattles Mansion, a 1907 Mission Revival residence dubbed “Jualita” by its original owners and the last remaining intact example of this type of “wintering” estate built by Eastern and Mid-western families in the early 20th century. Its extensive grounds, covering 49 acres, feature a Japanese garden, an Italian rose garden, a formal Spanish garden, Palm Court and orchards. Frequently used for motion picture and television filming, it’s a shoe-in for outdoor events for up to 200 through the Hollywood Heritage organization.

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Getting There

Los Angeles International Airport, with eight terminals, is one of the world’s busiest airports, with service by 25 domestic airlines, including Southwest. Most international flights are handled in the Tom Bradley International Terminal (Terminal B)

Bob Hope Airport in Burbank provides service by seven carriers. In addition to car rental companies, shuttles, hotel shuttles and taxis, an airport shuttle can take you from the curb to the nearby Amtrak station for connections to downtown.

Long Beach Airport handles four carriers, including JetBlue Airways, which is not at LAX. It is about 25 miles from downtown and has cab and shuttle service.

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Not To Be Missed

• Kodak Theatre. Even if your attendees aren’t star struck, a tour of this famous theater with one of the knowledgeable insider guides guarantees a goosebump or two—or at least bragging rights.
• Walt Disney Concert Hall. While the exterior design plans of this magnificent hall morphed from marble to titanium to stainless steel, the exterior of Douglas fir was never in question. “The interior is like an instrument,” says Carol Martinez, associate vice president of public relations for LA INC. The Convention & Visitors Bureau. With superior acoustics and the tone of its wood, “it’s like a cello,” she says.
• Catch a game (Lakers, Kings, Clippers, Avengers, Sparks) or a concert (acts like Eric Clapton) at Staples Center, the spark that ignited the resurgence of downtown.
• Treat yourself, or someone special at home, to a bauble from the Jewelry District, whose 5,000 retail and wholesale jewelers offer up a queen’s worth of beautiful, deeply discounted valuables (open Monday through Saturday, year-round). Try the St. Vincent’s Jewelry Center for good buys (we won’t tell).
• Take a walking tour of downtown of Hollywood—you heard us right—and be the first on your block. Try Red Line’s historic downtown tour, which encompasses the Bradbury Building, Grand Central Market and, among other sites, Broadway (home to numerous movie palaces, some of which, like the Million Dollar, are being restored and can be used for group events).
  

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