Welcome to our first 2023 newsletter as we continue production, post-production and fundraising for the Saving the City documentary series about how to make our cities better places. With so much attention focused on how to repurpose out-of-favor office buildings into much needed housing and other uses, experiences in Los Angeles, Dallas, New York and Philadelphia show two decades worth of office conversions. LA's traditional downtown core was largely vacant by the late 1980s as most offices moved west to the Bunker Hill redevelopment zone. With rows of buildings sitting empty except for ground floor retail, the Central City Association, an enterprising developer and the city worked together to create the 1999 adaptive reuse ordinance. It modified building and zoning codes to allow for the transformation of many of these structures into housing, directly resulting in 15,000 new units. And it kicked off a much larger downtown residential boom while offices have continued to languish. |
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Downtown Dallas has seen several older office buildings become housing and now some newer ones are being partially converted, while dozens of outmoded Wall Street area office towers turned into housing have led to an entirely new residential neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. And in Philadelphia, a host of older office buildings have been converted into hotels. We filmed the story of LA's adaptive reuse ordinance, part of which will appear in our second episode with an expanded version in a later segment on the subject. We also filmed LA's Bunker Hill redevelopment saga. Check out all of our newsletters here. Below is the 50-story Santander Tower in Dallas, where 11 floors are being converted into 228 residences and the top two floors house a boutique hotel. |
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After watching Saving the City, you will never look at cities the same way again. We hope you will be inspired to make a difference in your local communities. Check out our work and let us know what you think, suggest stories and refer us to people we should know about. And please share this newsletter with friends and family. |
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Thanks to generous funding from the William Penn, Packard, Hewlett, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia Foundations, Heinz Endowments, an Urban Land Institute leadership group and individuals led by George Miller and Chris Larsen, we have raised over $892,000 to date. A more complete list of contributors is here. Help us raise the $600,000 needed to complete our first two episodes as we're almost one-third of the way there. All funds go through the International Documentary Association, a 501c(3) non-profit. |
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Thank you to Tom and JaMel Perkins from San Francisco who just generously provided production support. |
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"This is Los Angeles. There's always an alternative route." David Kipen -- author, critic, broadcaster, arts administrator, full-time UCLA writing faculty member and nonprofit bilingual lending librarian. |
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Meet Carol Schatz, President and CEO of the Central City Association of Los Angeles from 1985 to 2016. |
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Copyright © Ronald M. Blatman, Inc. All rights reserved. |
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