blogdowntown: Latest Content

CRA/LA (Community Redevelopment Agency) just posted the RFP (Request for Proposals) for their downtown Red Car study. Basically, this is will be a $100,000 study to “provide recommended development approaches for the resurrection of downtown red car trolley services.” The RFP going out means that the study is about eight months away from completion...

Everyday

ah, promises*

By Eric Richardson — December 03, 2004

So I haven’t watched last night’s debate yet – I went to sleep at 4pm yesterday and didn’t wake up until 9am this morning. I did tivo it, so I’m planning to check it out this evening. That said, I saw an interesting tidbit in today’s LA Times coverage. Villaraigosa, who represents an East Los Angeles council district, said...

Everyday

ice skating downtown

By Eric Richardson — November 26, 2004

The rink’s little: I think 50x30 or so. But it is outside at Pershing Square, and that’s a juxtaposition that still seems pretty odd. It took me a little while to get a basic feel back for not making a fool of myself, but I think I ended up ok in that regard. Kathy, despite growing up in Michigan, has never ice skated much, but she showed definite...

Everyday

Eastside gets funding

By Eric Richardson — November 24, 2004

Nice to see this morning that the eastside Gold Line extension got its funding passed in Congress. I haven’t looked at the design docs much, but here’s to hoping they’ve learned a lot from dealing with the South Pasadena folks and can actually make a line this time that doesn’t slow to a crawl for half the time.

Everyday

Newsflash: LA Times like cars

By Eric Richardson — November 23, 2004

I read ”Lunch in L.A.? Car Beats Train as Meal Ticket” in today’s LA Times and thought pretty much the same things Will Campbell did. He posted his thoughts on blogging.la, while I contented myself to just sort of scoff and move on. But here I am, commenting… The author of the article has ticket machine problems. I’ve never had...

Everyday

streetscaping... it's like landscaping, but for streets

By Eric Richardson — November 23, 2004

So I went to a meeting last night about streetscaping on Spring and Main. Now if you’re like me you hear the word “streetscaping” and say “They’ve already got trees out there.” Turns out the CRA thinks streetscaping is a little more than I did. The process of drafting a set of guidelines for streetscaping on these streets...

Everyday

Downtown: heading east

By Eric Richardson — November 22, 2004

I’ve been downtown for six months now, and I’ve explored a lot of downtown, but one area that I haven’t much ventured into is the east side: Central City East, Little Tokyo, etc. Today I took a very small step in remedying that. First I needed to pick up some DLANC business cards from our office on 1st street, so I grabbed my skateboard and...

Everyday

formation flying

By Eric Richardson — November 15, 2004

Driving down Fig an hour or so ago I saw a large formation of helicopters heading east to west. Some chopper I didn’t recognize in front, then five or six LAPD birds, and finally five or six Sherrifs department choppers (which I don’t think I’ve seen before). I’m suspecting it was for filming; there’s something going on over on the...

Everyday

36 Hours in Downtown LA

By Eric Richardson — November 12, 2004

New York Times writer Janelle Brown today has a piece on 36 hours in downtown LA (found via LA Observed). The choices are good… I don’t really understand why the NYT has thrown so much love to the Golden Gopher, but whatever, it’s a trendy choice. I absolutely concur with the recommendation of Conservancy walking tours. That’s something...

Everyday

626, 727, hike

By Eric Richardson — November 11, 2004

Can I just say now that for how creative they’re all supposed to be, some of the gallery people around me are getting pretty lazy with their naming schemes. Across the street from me and appearing out of the blue Tuesday is 626 Gallery (ok, they probably didn’t show up out of the blue, but I left for school Tuesday morning and when I got back there...