Author D.J. Waldie writes on today's LAT op-ed page that Angelenos have left big decisions about the community to builders such as Eli Broad, and so the latest scheme to elevate Grand Avenue with residential towers, retail and public gathering spaces reflects him.

The retail component sounds, unfortunately, like a typical suburban "lifestyle center" with the movie theaters and bookstores that are everywhere. This is probably good business, but it may be bad urban planning. I don't know.

Nor do I know if it's a good idea to have one man's vision be the pivot on which a project of this importance will turn. It's not that Broad has been anything less than public-spirited, in the way that immensely wealthy and willful men imagine they are public-spirited. When Broad makes things happen in L.A., he sees to it they happen in ways that reasonably satisfy him, which he understands, I guess, to be the common good. (The county art museum was going to be radically rebuilt. Instead, it's getting a much tamer expansion — and a new building/museum, with Broad's name on it.)

Downtown is practically a museum of redevelopment plans gone wrong, missed opportunities and even more broken promises, so we need Broad. Someone has to wield power to get anything done, after all, which is what the old Committee of 25 did half a century ago in trying to turn its scandal-plagued and honky-tonk town into a real city.

Earlier this week, city and county officials approved the Grand Avenue plan: five skyscrapers, 400,000 square feet of retail, movie theater complex, a sixteen-acre park between the Music Center and City Hall and other work. Broad says it will create a vibrant new city center, but reviews are mixed. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, for example, wrote, "If well executed, the park could give downtown the truly vibrant gathering place civic leaders have dreamed of since the City Beautiful Movement at the turn of the previous century. But if it is sterile, overly precious or devotes too much space to high-priced retail pavilions, it will reinforce the city's reputation as a place where the private and the profitable trump the public every time."

First reactions:
Will this time be different? (LAT)
Imagining downtown (LAT)
Grand plan cost jumps $600 million (Daily News)