Urban renewal: A rendering of
L.A. Live
After years of being passed over, Los
Angeles is finally ready to play hardball for convention business
lost to cities such as Anaheim and San Diego. City officials are
betting that L.A. Live, the $4.5 billion downtown multi-use
development, which broke ground last September after 30 years on
and off the drawing board, will give them the edge they need.
“Los Angeles has not been on the radar for many meeting
planners for a long time, because downtown is just not perceived as
pedestrian-friendly,” said Katie Callahan-Giobbi, senior vice
president of sales for LA Inc., the Los Angeles Convention and
Visitors Bureau. “But this project is helping us to make really big
strides to remedy that.”
Being developed on 27.3 acres near the Staples Center arena,
L.A. Live will feature restaurants, retail shops and movie
theaters, as well as the 30,000-square-foot Grammy Museum and the
7,100-seat NOKIA Theatre. Anchoring the project will be a
1,100-room convention center headquarters hotel offering 70,000
square feet of meeting and event space. Budgeted at more than $600
million, the convention hotel also will include a 200-room luxury
property, as yet unflagged.
According to Callahan-Giobbi, the development has given the CVB
a whole new marketing focus. “People are ready for another West
Coast option, and we think that L.A. can now provide that,” she
said.