The Theatre District on Prezi

“Broadway’s been a neglected corridor for many years,” said Jessica Wethington Mclean, the coordinator for Bringing Back Broadway.

For that reason, both the City of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Conservancy passed initiatives to “bring back Broadway.”

In 2008, Los Angeles City Councilmember José Huizar enacted the 10-year Bringing Back Broadway plan, which seeks to repair broken sidewalks, increase parking options and attract more private business to the district. Seeing the Theatre District—often referred to as the “birthplace of entertainment”—in disuse and disrepair, Huizar felt strongly that city-sponsored preservation and revitalization efforts were necessary.

“He spent a lot of time there as a kid and he remembers how important Broadway is to the city,” said Mclean. “He really wants to do everything he can to make sure the corridor gets the attention it needs to make sure his children and their children can enjoy it.”

While vendors occupy several of the storefronts along Broadway—though Mclean said there is a 20 percent vacancy rate on the ground level—1 to 2 million square feet of commercial space on the upper floors are vacant. The goal of Bringing Back Broadway is to fill that space.

“Once the city steps in and really pays attention to the corridor, making it nice, making it viable in the public right of way, when that all starts to really work, it makes private investment make a whole lot more sense,” said Mclean.

The plan, which Mclean emphasized requires public and private partnerships, also applies to the street’s theatres. Mclean said the owners of the Los Angeles and the Palace theatres have issued letters of intent to restore the theatres as entertainment venues if the city complies in providing more parking and loading zones.

While the City of Los Angeles has focused its efforts on making the district appealing to investors, the Los Angeles Conservancy has worked to promote the restoration of its 12 theatres.

In 1999, the Conservancy set its preservation sights on Broadway.

“It was still a vibrant area—there was a big vibrant shopping district in the 90s—by day, but at night it was totally shuttered,” said Cindy Olnick, the director of Communications at the Los Angeles Conservancy. “So, we thought what could we do to bring Broadway back to the vibrant 24-hour urban community that it was in the day.”

As part of the Broadway initiative, the Conservancy began hosting and advertising entertainment programs in the theatres on Broadway. One of its series, the weeklong classic movie festival Last Remaining Seats is sold out every year.

“Once people see the theatres for themselves, they can’t help but want to preserve them,” said Olnick. “We want to create the constituency and the awareness that the theatres are still there, they are still viable and they just need some programming to get them started.”

The Broadway initiative also drafted construction guidelines for the historic buildings in the Theatre District.

Both the Broadway initiative and Bringing Back Broadway promote the use of the theatres for other purposes—while maintaining their original structures, of course.

Loew’s State, once the most profitable theatre on Broadway, is now a Spanish-language church. The Warner Bros. Theatre now houses a jewelry mart.

“In a perfect world, it would be great to have these things used for their intended purpose,” said Olnick. “But the fact is that times change, people’s needs change and the needs of the community change.”

John Ghini, a docent on the Conservancy’s Theatre District tour, said that he hoped that, with the efforts of the city and the Conservancy, the Theatre District would achieve its former glory in the next decade.

“In its height there were 17,000 people in the theatres, if the theatres were full, there were dance halls, there were restaurants,” said Ghini. “This place was really alive. It had vibrance, and these theatres helped do that.”

While vibrance is the long-term goal, Broadway activists are now working on filling the vacant, fixing the broken and preserving the old.

“Whatever keeps the theatres standing is what we’re for,” said Olnick. “Whatever keeps them standing and well cared for and preserved.”