EP.25 / Nella McOsker
Bradbury Building, Los Angeles
Central City Association’s 90-Day Plan to Revive DTLA
Downtown LA generates 30% of the city's business, parking, and transient occupancy tax revenues despite occupying just 1% of its land mass. Despite this, the neighborhood faces serious challenges: office vacancy rates have risen significantly, major convention bookings have been turned away for a decade, and the graffiti-covered Oceanwide towers remain a stark symbol of neglect.
In this conversation, Nella McOsker, President & CEO of Central City Association (CCA), details CCA's "Revive DTLA" plan. This 90-day roadmap was developed with input from over 100 stakeholders ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses, homeless service providers, and cultural institutions. The plan outlines how DTLA can achieve the basics: concentrated foot patrols, consistent street cleaning, and prioritized implementation of existing programs like CARE Court and Inside Safe, all without requiring massive new funding.
Nella also addresses the structural governance challenges that hinders progress, from LA's 15 council districts to the division of responsibilities between city and county. Plus, she highlights the practical solutions already showing results, including new bike patrols and foot beats announced shortly after the plan's release.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify
About Nella McOsker
Nella McOsker is the President & CEO of Central City Association (CCA), a premier advocacy organization dedicated to enhancing Downtown Los Angeles’ vibrancy and increasing opportunity in the region. In this role, McOsker represents the interests of 300 businesses, trade associations and nonprofit organizations in LA County.
Under her leadership, CCA has successfully advocated for increased housing in the DTLA 2040 Community Plan, partnered with Metro on a variety of initiatives including public safety station improvements, produced a report advocating for Governance Reform, published the RISE Roadmap for DTLA Economic Recovery and convened stakeholders around Olympics preparation. Building on CCA’s legacy of adaptive reuse, Nella is leading the organization in ushering in the next iteration of conversions in Los Angeles.
Prior to becoming CEO, McOsker served as CCA’s Vice President of Strategic Relations, managing operations, membership, revenue and development. She has an extensive background in Los Angeles public affairs executing major initiatives like statewide ballot propositions, corporate communications campaigns, crisis management and strategic planning.
McOsker is a member of the Board of Directors for FilmLA, serves on the Advisory Board for the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Los Angeles chapter, and was a founding private sector participant of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ Harvard Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative. She graduated from University of Notre Dame and is an alumna of the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs and Teach For America.
Topics Covered
Why Downtown LA's success is tied to the entire city's budget
Nella's background and path to leading CCA
CCA's mission and 300-member coalition
The convention center expansion: why it matters and what took so long
Oceanwide towers and the role of public-private partnership
Breaking down the four pillars of the Revive DTLA plan
Making the pitch for Downtown LA office space
What the private sector and city employees should be doing to support the success of DTLA
The overlooked power dynamics between city and county leadership
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Nella McOsker 00:00
Hi Nella, welcome to Building LA.
Nella McOsker 00:01
Thank you, Sam, it's a pleasure to be here.
Sam Pepper 00:03
I'm so excited to have you on. I've been following CCA for a long time, big fan of your work, and excited to talk about some of the initiatives that CCA is pursuing right now to improve downtown. So I want to start in terms of how downtown LA feels to you right now. So when you're walking through it today, what do you feel
Nella McOsker 00:23
in the way that the city of Los Angeles holds multitudes so does downtown. It's not a totally fair characterization sometimes of what we see on the news, and for those of us who are here every day, it both holds all of this active, exciting, dynamic promise and sparks and corridors that feel alive and special and unique to downtown. And also it's the case that other corridors present the very challenges that we are facing every day across the city of Los Angeles, but most acutely in downtown. And so I was thinking about, for some reason, I ended up watching the music video of, I love LA, the Randy Newman song, and it iconically, I think people remember the convertibles and the beach scenes, but it opens on a what looks like an encampment, it's sort of, I think, always been a part of, to some degree, our understanding of the reality of Los Angeles. And I think there's no place that's more present than downtown, when we can constantly strive to make it the best version of our city in being the city center, right, and being this, literally centrally located, but also massive driver of economic growth and potential right for the future.
Nella McOsker 01:49
I would assume you would echo that if downtown LA is thriving, then LA is thriving, and they cohabitate with each other. One can't really succeed without the other. Absolutely.
Nella McOsker 01:58
It's really, actually math when you look at the fact that downtown Los Angeles takes up 1% of the city's land mass, but is contributing 30% of parking, business, hotel tax revenue for the city, it is very much the case from a governance and financial perspective that the success of Downtown is the success of the rest of the city. So these four zip codes, real pieces of it in the downtown corridor, are driving the ability for sidewalk repair and firefighter hiring across the entire region. And what we've seen in the last couple of years is that some of those categories, are slipping. And I don't think that any of us would be surprised by that when you walk the streets of downtown, or you follow what's happening in the office sector, right these key markets that are so essential to the downtown ecosystem. But then, of course, the wider city budget. So I think it's not only the case that our success is tied, but it like it needs desperate attention because of that very math problem.
Nella McOsker 03:07
And it's interesting, because I think a lot of folks who are maybe, I'll just use an example located on the west side, potentially in Santa Monica downtown, la seems very far away and maybe not even part of their sort of ecosystem. And because LA is so decentralized, you can more easily make an argument that, oh, we can sort of let downtown LA go, because we've got Century City, we've got Playa Vista, we'll be fine. But in reality, it still is, maybe less low than like Manhattan, but it is still the engine. And I think in a context which we'll talk more about, about a city that has budget issues, having that revenue come in is obviously critical. So we're going to dive into downtown Lane in depth today, but before we do, I did want to just kind of talk a little bit about you and your background. So how did you get into this role?
Nella McOsker 03:48
I come from a family of Angelenos. We have been generations in Los Angeles, but especially San Pedro, which is this other special pocket of Los Angeles, very south, most tip of the sprawling math that is LA and I started my career technically in education. I worked at a school in Chicago and then at another school in New York. And so some of my like interest in what downtown Los Angeles can be comes from experiences in other cities where I saw really thriving urban centers, public transit and the public space and sort of approaches of those cities to those CBDs. And so in coming back to LA, when I was making a transition and moving more into public policy and political work, I did the coro Fellowship, which was a fantastic experience exposing me to a multitude of sectors and people and really building my network in Los Angeles. Every job I've gotten since has been a result of the coro network and and I think that civic community and civic pride that is also so intrinsic to LA I worked in communication. Students consulting, then a little bit more in the political kind of campaign world. And then I fell in love with CCA, really, through an engagement under it's my immediate predecessor, in which we're doing some work to support, kind of the strategic planning of the organization. And it's cool to see and be a part of. Now it's next phase, right? That strategic plan is long gone, because the world changed with covid.
Nella McOsker 05:24
I was there for a couple months at CCA before the pandemic hit. I look back now at that being really excellent training for member support and work with our businesses in a constantly shifting like quicksand environment, if we can all remember that time. Everything now is still challenging. We are still sustaining sort of new crises. You know, it feels like every month, every couple of weeks in Los Angeles, but nothing could be as hard as that. I think that really unprecedented moment globally. And so this is that sort of part of my tenure at leading the organization at CCA has been about constantly reminding myself of what downtown looked like in those really teens, from odds on, there have been moments of downtown's kind of evolution and transformation, some of which I saw and was a part of, some of which I lean on our members to remind me of. You think about, you know, it was a sleepy office park really, up until the late 90s, early aughts, until adaptive reuse transformed some of our buildings into housing, and then you got to attract retail and nightlife and write a whole host of things that are part of the history of the organization and part of the history of downtown. And I feel with my kind of maybe unexpected path, there is also, of course, a through line in a in a family and a history that's rooted in civic engagement, from grandfather and uncles who are firefighters to a father and another uncle in public service and legal work, right? Like we tend to show up and be interested in these questions about what makes a city thrive, how we can solve really tricky problems, and also like keep digging deep to find the best of what it is we do and what our industries are capable of to really solve some of these challenges.
Nella McOsker 07:18
Do you think that having multi generational family of folks who are different positions involved in public service, makes you more critical or more understanding of the challenges of someone being in power.
Nella McOsker 07:31
Little bit of both. Yeah, a little bit of both, right? I'm lucky to have a little bit of insight even you know I think about a sibling in the fire department, and a cousin and the County Fire Department, another sibling at Cal Fire up in Northern California. And so some of what I'm lucky with this big public service based family to have are like multiple touch points and understanding of experience, even though it's not firsthand, right? It's still sort of rooted in what it's like to serve and operate in different facets of either local government or state, right, entities like Cal Fire cousins who are in the Navy, right, like so I think it's broad, and I both am hard on and maybe more sensitive to the people who have positional power to make some of these things happen for us.
Nella McOsker 08:26
So for those who maybe have heard of CCA, maybe been to an event, but don't know the organization super well, what's its mission and who's it for?
Nella McOsker 08:34
It's an advocacy organization that is rooted in member supports. We have about 300 members, many of which you have a vested interest or physical presence somehow in downtown. But we think about our advocacy as the way in which downtown is a lens or a microcosm of the public policy and challenges that our members face across the whole region of Southern California. We exist to advance and advocate for and push on multiple sectors in order to solve these challenges for our members. And it's a broader swath than I think people fully appreciate. Of course, we are rooted in business advocacy as, again, the downtown being this economic center and engine of our city and of our region. So you know, everyone from Fortune 500 sort of global large employers to small businesses to arts and culture institutions, homeless service providers, nonprofits, higher education, I feel very proud of the fact that CCA represents a broad and complex ecosystem of players that are all interacting with and part of the new version of downtown Los Angeles and the new version of like broader Los Angeles that allows us to arrive at policy positions that are thoughtful, nuanced, but also bold and. Very rooted in success and results, which is hard to do, hard to do, with a broader base than maybe some homogenous groups. We have trade associations within our membership as well, right? They represent one individual industry, and that's awesome to have those, because then you're sort of talking about a magnitude of scale and thinking about who you represent. We're constantly pushing and pulling against the responses to some of these challenges, but I feel as though we're always thinking about what is most successful for downtown, and how do we keep pushing to ensure that its success again translates to the city's success.
Nella McOsker 10:42
Because you are representing such a broad group of folks who have a stake in downtown LA, for XYZ reason, is finding the prioritization of what CCA is focused on quite challenging. How do you prioritize?
Nella McOsker 10:56
I think that one of the things that's really affirming, and I know, I'm sure we'll talk about it in a minute. Is this downtown recovery plan that we just put out a little over a month ago? One way of answering your question is it constantly Amazes and delights me how aligned our members actually are, which is a little bit of a statement that we ought to keep reminding ourselves around like broader political issues in this moment. But I don't mean this to be pollyannish. I mean this is like a true, affirming, right process of interviewing, meeting with and developing a plan that again, represents a small business, massive global corporation, a homeless service provider and a museum or arts and culture Institution and a school, all of which agreed and said, these are the things that we need to do to make downtown safe welcoming, address the mental health and homelessness crises that we have on our streets. And so, more often than not, people are on the same page.
Nella McOsker 11:58
If the challenge the structure of governance, what's the biggest barrier, do you think? Because the revived downtown Lake plan, a lot of the things you're advocating for on paper seem quite simple and obvious, but getting it done seems much harder. Why is that?
Nella McOsker 12:15
Yeah, there's a governance reform discussion happening right now that asks the question of how we make decisions, from land use to long range planning to infrastructure. And some of the things that are frustrating about these discussions is that all you have to do is really look at other major cities. So something like a capital infrastructure plan, which almost every, if not every other major city in the country has that essentially ties budget multi year, by the way, budgeting processes to capital, infrastructure projects. We don't have. We have this whole sort of, like Los Angeles exceptionalism, which maybe Sam you run into as, like an American exceptionalism thing, but like, it's so present in Los Angeles as, oh, we're different. And geographically, we are geographically back to that discussion of downtowns. There is no city in the country quite like Los Angeles, but we can't let some of those characteristics hamper fundamental governance and structural things that will allow us to move past those so, yes, it is the case that in the current structure of 15 council districts and some challenges around the sort of weak powers of the mayor, we're not able to coalesce around a geography like downtown that is paying for and providing services for other far reaches of the city, and so CCA exists in order to remind people of that and advocate on behalf of this geography, but structurally, we could change how we do this and prioritize like I think about this huge success, and finally approving and breaking ground on the convention center.
Nella McOsker 14:02
It took some 12 years, even though it's been needed for that long, to build a coalition, to not take no for an answer and to keep advancing a project that we know again, back to the numbers, creates 1000s of jobs, is a return on investment in terms of infrastructure. You don't do that with a bridge or a sidewalk, right? You don't see that money back. You see the money back when you invest in a convention center expansion. And we have been losing out on some of the biggest conventions in the country, literally turning them away because we can't fit them in our current space, our current configuration, when decision making is parochial and not tied to right, a system, a CIP, this capital infrastructure plan process, you see a backlog and then a like political jockeying of who gets what when, and some of that is always. Just the nature of local governance, however, those systems, those structures, the governance itself, can allow for more common sense, depoliticized decision making, because you see the way in which math helps you answer the problem.
Nella McOsker 15:17
I actually am a little bit of a skeptic around the convention center, and the reason why, and it kind of goes against my generally optimistic view on things, but the amount of money that goes into the investment of it for conventions that I don't see as being something that necessarily is a as an industry. The convention industry is a growing industry, but when you look at the amount of money that is being spent on it, could that not be spread around downtown LA in a better way.
Nella McOsker 15:44
Oh, yeah, and it's going to be one we constantly ask and have to remind people. But here are my responses to that number one. Like I said, we are getting beat by Anaheim, San Diego, Vegas, massive what's called citywide conventions, essentially the citywide ones, 50,000 or more attendees. We've been saying, Sorry, we can't fit you. And those are just opportunity costs we will never even be able to capture back over the last decade, conventions are booking 510 years out, and they're already saying, finally, we can come to Los Angeles. We see a massive difference in downtown when there is a major convention in terms of foot traffic and also solving some of those other problems public safety. An active Street is a safer one, and some of our businesses who have been standing with us and advocating on behalf of the convention center one that's really close to the location she can hit payroll when she's looking at the convention lineup. So it literally does keep some of these small businesses open.
Nella McOsker 16:48
But then you pull that out citywide, you see immense increases in the whole sort of hotel industry when there's a major convention in town, right? That impact, that ripple effect is there and present, and that's why we had chambers and business associations from the valley and Hollywood and everywhere else come and say, We need this in downtown, even though we broke out of the parochialness from a industry standpoint years ago on this project, the industry sees it and knows of the value and the way in which it helps. Tourism has been hit hard in Los Angeles by perception and by other policy decisions. So I think there is no better way to spend money than on the kind of long range for the next 30 years we're going to see the benefits of this thing and a healthy Convention Center means more capacity to be able to spend on cops and firefighters and street lights over the next 30 years. Otherwise, we we will keep tripping over these same literally and figuratively, these same cracks in the sidewalk. You have to stop the bleeding and think structurally about the future beneficiaries of this investment, because we benefited from LA Live Staples Center downtown didn't exist in its current form before these big projects came online.
Nella McOsker 18:11
Is any of the funding for the convention center allocated to ocean wide and covering up the graffiti because it seems like they're neighbors and there's still such a bad symbol for the city.
Nella McOsker 18:22
Oh, yeah, it's absolutely unacceptable. CCA has long hoped for and pushed for and wanted a private solution, right? A private sale. It's a complex situation, and we are reaching a point at which and we call for it in the plan, the public sector needs to be involved, condemnation, eminent domain, and there's a role for the private sector to play too. There's more interest, frankly, in the purchase and sale of that realist piece of real estate because of the investment in the convention center. So I think again, symbolism of that project is that if the city isn't willing to invest in its own massive capital asset in downtown, other people should be too. That's sometimes the role of the city is to plant a flag in the ground and say, We haven't given up on this. That's a reason for the private sector to pay attention and hang on. Because they didn't. They had little reason to otherwise.
Nella McOsker 19:16
That's my feeling on it is that the city needs to go part of the way to then indicate to private capital that the city will be a very key partner with them. My feeling on it is that there's no way it won't be solved before the Olympics next year. It's the World Cup next year, because I think there's enough people that just understand that we can't have that embarrassment, you know, being seen from the 10 as you're entering downtown LA even if the weekend before.
Nella McOsker 19:43
Yeah, we'll keep pushing there are temporary solutions. We have to keep demanding long term ones. It's also it gets back to this sort of like resource thing, the resources we have spent on law enforcement, helping secure the perimeter, that, to me, that's an example of where the dollar. Dollars better spent. What role do we want the city to play in, sometimes the immediate response and kind of some of the band aid solutions versus the long term, structural ones? And at CCA, we constantly are thinking about the balance of we called for a curfew in downtown this summer. That's a temporary fix long term we need, and we've have success. Finally, we've got these foot beats that are starting in downtown right like there's always again, this sort of push and pull of short term and long term investments, and we have to find that right balance and keep calibrating with every new budget cycle, with every new project.
Nella McOsker 20:39
So when we look at downtown LA's challenges, how much of it do you think is what people perceive, which is physical safety, cleanliness, how much do you think solving that, which I'm not saying that's easy, especially the homeless part that solving that will then unlock the sort of regeneration of Downtown LA to the promise that I think it held in The late 2010s when it was kind of the beacon for a lot of cities in the US of how to create a cool downtown that businesses want to be in.
Nella McOsker 21:08
I think it's everything. I really think that it's priority number one, and it's a way to think about, again, investments like the convention center to make good on that you have to get right street level safety and perception of safety is just as much, right? There's always that tension of real and perceived crime is down, especially nowadays. Yeah, the stats are really good. Actually, this last quarter was just speaking with our partners at LAPD, higher number of arrests on their part, and sort of like general trend that doesn't make a difference if headlines or stories or real experiences that people have had are keeping them away, and they have good reason to feel that way and to be uncertain about their safety. So I think it's everything, and then also the way in which homelessness or people experiencing mental health crises, is a version of safety that doesn't necessitate law enforcement response or shouldn't have to, but that we have to appropriately address in order to make people feel like when they're walking from their office to one of the few lunch spots that's still open, they can do that in in good faith, knowing that they will be safe on that walk.
Nella McOsker 22:24
Yeah, it's sad. I feel like the I mean a that we live in an environment, obviously, where there's a lot of very targeted social media journalism, which has a specific agenda, but I do think that there's a perception that is real when you go downtown, and it doesn't feel like other downtowns in the US on Tuesday at lunchtime, it should be buzzing, and it was. I also just when we talk about these diagnosis and you're diagnosing the problem, wouldn't be surprised if you have to be a little bit delicate here, but the local council member her agenda and interests and priorities. Do you see that being aligned with CCA in terms of what your priorities are. Because I think a lot of folks probably look at it and think, Well, yeah, on paper, I agree with all these things, but you also have to prioritize the businesses that are going to bring hundreds and 1000s of people to the streets to then operate and provide people customers for their lunches, etc, for the restaurants. I might be wrong. It doesn't seem like while her priorities are certainly honorable that she is also she's providing a sort of holistic view of how to regenerate and revitalize downtown.
Nella McOsker 22:24
I'll say this. She in the short time she's taken office, she has been a champion for the convention center. She stood with us in that call for a public safety a more aggressive public safety response in the summer around the curfews. She has stated, in different ways, in sort of public settings, that I think her terminology is like, we can't keep treating downtown as our piggy bank in the city of Los Angeles. So I think she does understand kind of that economic revenue piece of this puzzle. We do not agree with her on everything at CCA, but we have found a collaboration in these especially in this year, these last several months, around the opportunities that there are for alignment and that exists as like kind of a tension with any and all elected officials, I think it matters that she's the council member that represents the majority of downtown. There's a couple pieces of downtown that are represented by other council members as well, portions of CD one and CD nine, and a role for the mayor.
Nella McOsker 22:33
And honestly, like as we put in this plan, a role for multiple levels of government the county is actually the governing body responsible for mental health and homeless services full stop. Where is the county? We're gonna have some new leadership for the county seat that covers downtown in the next cycle. There's some shared responsibility here. We've been talking to the district attorney to the city of. Attorney, like on enforcement, everyone needs to care deeply about downtown success, and I think it's fair to say the council member understands deeply the problem, and we will find every opportunity to align and collaborate to that effect, and then we'll agree to disagree and still fight our battles on the rest.
Nella McOsker 22:33
Let's talk about this plan. So the Revive Downtown LA plan. As of recording, it's October 16, when people are listening to this, hopefully it'll be soon days a few days after that, it was released couple of weeks ago. It got some publicity. Very, very clear, very concise plan. What are the highlights?
Nella McOsker 25:36
Four sections, somewhat in order of hierarchy of needs, frankly, safety. Second section is mental health and homelessness. Third section is Beautification and cleanliness, sort of street level experience. And the fourth is activation, things like ocean wide, symbolic projects and measures. It has been encouraging that the mayor announced a foot beat that's already begun in downtown, as well as a bike patrol. So I think that the secret to the plan, the not so secret, secret, is that it should be just the basic infrastructure that is provided by the city and the county and all departments they're in, but a demand for some prioritization on this important section of the city of the county, and also some creativity therein, where it's not massive demands of new funding necessarily. When you talk about the footbeat, for example, there's a shortage of officers across LAPD.
Nella McOsker 26:36
Again, I would argue that everyone across the city of Los Angeles deserves to be safe and feel safe. But what do you get when you concentrate more resources, more officers in the downtown corridor? Again, you get more protection and support for tourism, for the office market, for the 90,000 residents who live in downtown. That is larger than Santa Monica, and that is a really important sort of unsung success of downtown from pre to post pandemic, really, through the pandemic period, you didn't see any other downtowns across the country grow as much in their residential population as you see in downtown Los Angeles, which is huge. And so I think again, we're talking about an allocation of resources and a really fast, rapid we we set it on 90 days. In 90 days, these things could happen. And when you think about a bike patrol, right? These are like the visibility piece. This gets to the perception just as much as the reality and deterrence of crime that people need to see. Sidewalk cleanings on a more regular basis. There's incredible work happening already from the business improvement districts and some private entities. We try to call that out in the plan, right? But like, here's how much we're estimating the private sector is already spending. It's time for the city and the county to match it.
Nella McOsker 27:58
Why did you feel like this was necessary to produce this document, and why now? And I'm I'm wondering if it was a result of some frustration that it wasn't happening and the timing of it. There isn't a clear reason for, like, why now versus a year ago? What was the purpose? We
Nella McOsker 28:16
put together a version of a recovery plan when I took the helm at CCA in 2023 and I think that it was necessary then, just as much as it's necessary now, but the urgency of this moment I'll reference this summer, which was immigration enforcement actions that led to protests that led to a spotlight on downtown, in a way that is not the full picture, a mischaracterization in some ways, and yet, also, once again, downtown was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, and none of which were helping solve the problems. And so that was really a precipitating moment, I should say, of Okay, now we have to define this as clearly and succinctly as possible, and to some degree make it appear as like, it's just basic. It's It's so basic, what we're asking for.
Nella McOsker 29:14
Oceanwide will be tricky to solve, but we've seen it now as a symbol of downtown's neglect for years. So there's nothing new or surprising therein. And I think about some of the things that we tried to define even around successful programs that are just not being implemented or concentrating in downtown, in the way that they need to be care courts, inside safe operations, there have been woefully too few in downtown, and yet downtown has this concentration of places, resources, locations to house people. Why are we not pulling enough of our own unhoused population off the street and into those spaces with enough resources? Right? Like, I think that there's a measure of frustration in the tone of this, but again, it's intended to also have that shared responsibility and call out the myriad of departments and tiers of government and offices that can be a part of the solution. And we've gotten great response.
Nella McOsker 30:22
When it looks a bit ahead to what downtown I will look like in a few years, and how it evolves, my fear is sometimes that there's so much inaction that happens and these problems persist where there's a perception of lack of safety, ocean wide, all these things that affect people's desire to go down downtown to visit the museums and go to restaurants, etc, and then the reaction is an overreaction, I mean, which is obviously what it was when we had all the raids where there's a problem about security, sure, but the response from Washington DC is completely inappropriate. The reason they like the plan so much is because it is short term. And I think one of the frustrations I hear when I go to, like, town hall meetings, or I'm at like chamber event or whatever, a lot of council members, and I don't know if it's intentionally or unintentionally, talk about these long term plans, and people don't have any patience.
Sam Pepper 31:12
Or if your mother is walking their six year old daughter to school, you don't want to have to deal with what you have to deal with right now, and having someone say, Well, what you know, in couple years, like, couple years, that should be eight, right? It's like, it doesn't, it doesn't work. She'll be at a different school. So that, I think, for some reason, I feel like, and I recognize some of these problems are tricky, but the solutions you're presenting it is frustrating. Someone who's reading it and saying, why hasn't this been a priority from day one with council member with the mayor's office and and what have been the blockades for doing it? Is it funding? Is it prioritization? Is it unions? What is it so I hope that it gets traction, and I'm curious if what the response has been from folks who have read it both public, let's say, stakeholders in the city and folks in office.
Nella McOsker 32:03
Response from stakeholders has been immensely supportive, many of which, right, like they participated in the development.
Nella McOsker 32:09
So you interviewed a lot of people as part of that, right? Oh,
Nella McOsker 32:12
Yeah, at least 100 of our 300 members had an active, participatory role in creating this document and creating this plan. But I think anyone outside of that, it's just like, yes, please. Let's get this done from various offices. I think there's like, again, it helps to give very simple clarity to like, there's a shot clock end of this year. What of these measures can we accomplish now? Some of them will continue past. Some of it needs to continue to be a focus like we will not solve homelessness in downtown in a 90 day period, but we can say these programs that we're trying or attempting across the city need to be concentrated in the one place in which the problem is the most profound to be able to do proofs of concept, I think about a lot of focus right now in the city is on unarmed response models, which we're very supportive of at CCA. I think it's important that we are figuring out which portion of 911, calls are rerouted away from an officer and towards mental health professionals and service providers to get people help. There are pilot programs of this. One program is called circle. There's others. There's pilots all over Los Angeles, and there's a couple of pilots in downtown, wrap the full territory, the full freeway belt, if you will, with this program, and dedicate those resources to figuring out if it works in downtown, that's the place to do it.
Nella McOsker 33:43
And so the response has been positive, and I think it's it's been positive even from electeds who don't represent downtown, because I think they all intuitively do know the argument that we've been making, and that's breaking through. And yet their situation is that they can't be seen dedicating maybe resources to another section of the city, but that's why we have to keep on reminding those tax math fact based answers to why downtown, like I said, footbeats have started, which were not in place before the plan was announced. A bike patrol is getting developed. We have meetings with public works on some Beautification and street cleaning efforts. Work with a council member right now on figuring out what role, like murals and sort of public art can play in all of this. And so I think we're going to keep pushing and pushing it matters that this is happening after we sort of like held, interestingly, like the process was such that the announcement and the success of the convention center happened just a few weeks before we released because it's back to this sort of like, if you're going to do if you're going to make this massive investment, you got to get the street level stuff right, too.
Sam Pepper 34:55
The report says it has a kind of slightly startling statistic on the. Surface, which is the office vacancy rate in downtown lanes Highland Detroit. Now there's so many more buildings in downtown LA than there are in Detroit. And downtown Detroit is now a lot of parking lot, unfortunately, because of what happened in the 80s and 90s, etc. So there's nuances here, but the reality it seems to be is that bringing office tenants back will happen slowly. These leases are long. People are moving away. They go in other areas. In the city, they're signing long term leases. So does LA have the patience for the rebound to be multiple years? Because it could be that there still is a large vacancy happening in two or three years from now, we're going to see a lot of buildings setting change hands with distressed debt, and it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. What's your pitch to people now, if a large corporation is moving to LA from New York and they want to build a West Coast headquarters, how would you pitch it today? It's like, well, we're promising that it'll be like this in the future. Or here's the benefit of downtown later day.
Nella McOsker 36:00
There will always be a reason to have a big office presence in the center of the city where you have transit amenities, it's the best place to work. And again, I don't mean to dismiss all of the challenges we just discussed, walking from your parking garage, maybe to your building or whatever, to your place of lunch or coffee shop. But that being said, like from transit to arts and culture to sports entertainment, that's where you want to go to work because and that's where your employees will want to go to work because of the extension of amenities, sort of after hours again, there's also a massive contingent of people who have decided to move and stay and live and be active residents of downtown. I know that that was like a sort of a, you know, national, global movement towards city centers, pre pandemic, and we've seen a little bit of shifts in that, but it's still the case that people want to walk to work or hop on the train and not be locked in their car for the number of hours that many of us essentially knows are. So I think all of those selling points are still true and will be true. I want to make sure I clarify our Detroit statistic two is really focused on retail. That's a retail comparison, which is a whole other I think, has a different set of solutions than kind of compelling big tenants or large employers to stay or come to downtown. I don't mind the comparison to like a hot office market, like Century City, because I think it underscores everything we've been talking about. It is safe, it is clean,
Sam Pepper 37:38
Yeah, and arguably boring.
Nella McOsker 37:39
And arguably boring. It doesn't have any of those other things that I led with right as part of what I would make as the best pitch to downtown Los Angeles. So you asked at some point right, like, how important is safe and clean? It's everything. It really is everything, because then all the rest of what downtown has to offer really shines.
Sam Pepper 37:58
I agree, when you look at the options for both a resident and a company. If you're a CEO or you're someone who wants to live in LA outside of the fact that you maybe want to like surf at five o'clock every morning, people want to be around other people, period. And it's why retail centers like Larchmont or some of the areas actually, in East you know, Atwater Village is why they are incredibly popular, because there is a concentration of storefronts that are active where there's a variety of things to do at all ages, and the infrastructure for that is present in downtown LA more than is anywhere else. There's a few key things that need to happen, safety and security. Safety and security is certainly one of them. But also, places like Detroit have had the benefit of Rocket Mortgage and Ford Motor Company putting in hundreds of millions of dollars into downtown Detroit as a symbol of their own company, because the city is so tied to it.
Sam Pepper 38:59
And that was a unique example of someone going in there and having the ability to buy up a lot of properties and put a lot of money into the into the city. We may or may not have that luxury in downtown LA, but I am curious to understand what you think the private sector could be doing more of because we obviously, we talk a lot about how what the public sector can do, but there's private organizations that could, if they wanted to, who have a lot of cash at hand, they could put money towards improving downtown Lane in a very direct way, whether it's through public art or whatever it is, buying up buildings. Are there folks that you spoke to or sort of exploring that, because it feels like there would be, even if it's for a kind of philanthropic endeavor?
Nella McOsker 39:41
Absolutely, yeah, I think about where San Francisco might be a better comparison, or, like, there's some things to model and copy. And it brings us to storefronts, the success of vacant to vibrant, really concentrating resources, private dollars and public ones towards activating and. And filling vacant storefronts, especially like we've been as we've been talking about this, we are focused on, where is there a company who just signed a new lease or recommitted to being in downtown? They're bringing in their employees four or five days a week. How do we ensure that within walking distance of literally, that address their people have places to go. And so these are very interconnected issues, and I don't I won't let public sector off the hook. By the way, on this with we have not seen a return of government employees the city the county, who are a massive driver of the entire ecosystem. And so while, of course, there are more private companies who could make stronger commitments on in office presence or in their leases, I see them. I know many of them are doing that. They're also making that calculation about whether or not they want to put their employees at risk or ask them to sort of see and experience pretty horrific things on a daily basis. So it's where the safety and services piece comes in. It's where I think the public sector bears a responsibility to bring their employees in more regularly.
Sam Pepper 41:16
What's the roadblock? Then? I've heard a few things about why the city isn't bringing their own employees in. It seems like it seems kind of kind of frankly absurd, but I've heard there's structural issues, but I don't really buy the ones I've heard.
Nella McOsker 41:28
I don't buy any of the answers either. I think that there's a perception, and maybe reality, that the private sector has greater flexibility, and then that's a tough thing to impose on, on government again, I think that there's responses to that where, especially in certain departments, where, like some of my members, are literally trying to get their answers addressed and going to empty office buildings. That's what you sign up for. That's what the role of government is. And I'm willing to apply some flexibility to whatever those policies may be, but I think there could be a stronger commitment that, again, has been especially in some pockets in Bunker Hill and areas of downtown, literally, the ecosystem depended on those foot traffic from nine to five, we see a fascinating thing happening too, from Nine to five and five to nine in downtown, where five to nine can feel better and safer, because that's when you're seeing some of the like after hours nightlife resident presence come to be I think that I will be continuing to call on and I think that there is some programmatically, absolutely, there are things to Copy from what one of the things we see downtown LA is not experiencing something terribly unique, from Detroit to Chicago to New York to San Francisco, every downtown faced some combination of pandemic impact to sluggish sort of in person, office return to challenges around public safety and growth and homelessness and mental health challenges.
Nella McOsker 43:07
What's different in LA has been our lack of response, I think about now one more thing which CCA has been focused on, there will always be a need for spaces in the city center to come together and work and we want a strong office market. Are there a set of buildings that we can pull off the market and convert to housing because we have this fantastic residential growth? Yes, that's what every other city downtown in the country has figured out as some sort of incentive program to help stabilize the market and also solve this other problem of more housing downtown is the best place to build with greater density. With this, again, like set of people who want to walk and take transit and see a show and a sports game, I really feel strongly about this that like back to whatever LA's exceptionalism and lack of ability to see the interconnectedness of different pockets, all of these sort of like urban centers. Really, we're talking about a framework at CCA that I think is very replicable in other CBDs, other little central business districts that are not so it's not really unique to downtown Los Angeles, but investing in those spaces, in the businesses, institutions, nonprofits, even that are there is quite literally the answer to either bigger budget and structural problems.
Sam Pepper 44:30
It feels very thematic right now and very of the moment to talk about blue states having an issue getting things done, and blue cities, and I think part of the frustration that the whole country has with the Democrats LA is the exceptionalism of it should not be that it's a great place to live, but getting stuff done here is incredibly difficult. It didn't used to be the case a long time ago, this was really the founders on a place where dreams could happen. So the movie industry magic was happening here. But California has slowed down, with exceptions. When I 10 had the fire, I mean, that was up and running within two weeks. I think when there is urgency, things can happen. But we are seeing it across the board right now, whether it's the fires or public safety, that the response is just not there and not coming as fast as people would like. And of course, the perception is exacerbated by folks on social media. So is this kind of a cycle, but it's real too, that there needs to be more action. And I think some people, hopefully are understanding that. You certainly do. I think there is a critical mass of people who now do, who do you think is gonna be the next mayor of LA?
Nella McOsker 45:25
I don't know the mayor is an incredible spokesperson, driver, leader of our city, positionally and this one, but to what degree do we need to keep thinking about the multi tiered responsibility? I'm not going to let us solely focus on the responsibility of the mayor to solve homelessness when we have a massive county mandate. That's a mandate of the county. Some of the answer to your question, Sam is sort of like we are in a moment now, when things have gotten to where they are and everyone needs to be reminded of what they do. What is your responsibility as a city. The responsibility of the city is basically public safety, trash, right, just like basic infrastructure and services, what's the responsibility of the county? Mental Health, homelessness, right? Like some of these other ones, everyone do what you are chartered to do. And actually, I think we get out of this enough. I call on public leaders to be reminded of the stuff that makes you feel good and that is like, politically helpful. We're past that focus on the mandate, focus on the responsibility that is like set out in the charter, and some things we need to change in the charter, maybe, but that that's actually, it's like, not very sexy, but it's how we get out of this. It's how we turn the corner, like, and the same thing on the state. The state can play a role in helping us take it. You know, condemnation, eminent domain of ocean wide. It's a, it's a national security question, visibility question, visibility question, as it relates to the Olympics, no one's off the hook. It matters who's the mayor of Los Angeles, tremendously. But some of what I think I try to do when I'm talking to those who are not in it every day, in the way that I am, is some of this education of sort of like, Where does responsibility lie? And then how do we press on those leaders to make it happen where that's what their job is?
Sam Pepper 47:46
I'm glad you answered it that way, because it's the right answer, and it's interesting right now, because we're on the other coast, we obviously have a very high profile election in New York City, where there's tension, potentially it might be overblown between Mamdani, who's the presumptive winner, and Kathy Ogle who will control how he spends his money. That conversation and that the power dynamic between those two people is a national story, but in LA, we don't talk about the power dynamic between who's the exec leader of the county and the mayor, some reason that is never, is very rarely part of like a public discussion, but it's so important and so critical, and there needs to be, I think, a rebroadcasting or a new way of talking about the governance system of LA in a way that's very Simple people understand, so that we can actually get momentum behind simple changes to the structure that could actually ensure that we are able to have people in power that can be effective, and have people in power that can coordinate with other people in power to ensure that we have a cohesive solution to things, rather than the scattershot approach that is limited by a funding structure that has a very short timeframe, but it seems like that is rarely part of the discussion. It's always just, oh, is it going to be Karen Bass, or is it going to be Caruso, or is it gonna be someone else? And that doesn't matter as much.
Nella McOsker 49:18
It's hard, because it's like, it's wonky, and people's eyes glaze over, as it sort of should, right and in interesting ways, like the power even of, I think, of some of the state electeds we've been working with on some of this recovery stuff has been tremendous. There is a ton of responsibility, but it's easy to hide or easy to point fingers or easy to not sort of push or elevate the right person and leader in each of these and I'm not, again, I'm not. I think it matters tremendously who is the mayor, and also even the powers of the mayor, which come into the whole charter discussion as well. Are there the right lines of accountability and power even?
Sam Pepper 49:55
Thank you for your time. We have one last question. What are your three favorite buildings or places in Los Angeles_
Nella McOsker 50:02
It's hard to not pick all downtown spots you can do that. Give me freedom to do that. I love the Bradbury Building. It's iconic and gorgeous, and back to our like our film and television identity in LA right. So gorgeous, so beautiful. I'm really kind of, when I think about the history and the birthplace of LA like El Pueblo, talk about reinvented and or multitude of identities, Spanish rule to Mexican to us, right? Like, that's downtown. That's in our in our city center. It's in our extended name of Los Angeles, el pueblo. And I'll do kind of a one that illustrates what we've been talking about. City National Plaza. It's privately managed and owned and maintained, and it's got one of my favorite coffee shops, and you can see people grabbing lunch at one of the restaurants nearby, or, like, bringing their lunch down from the office. And it I recently did, Gensler does their like down, you know, their little Derby Day with their employees. And so it's like, it's kind of one of those, like beacons of what all of our public spaces could look like what we see in other major cities. That's my three
Nella McOsker 51:23
Thank you so much, Sam, it's been a pleasure.
Sam Pepper 51:23
I love that you ended on that one because it is a microcosm of how a downtown should work within a downtown that maybe isn't working to its full potential. Nella, really appreciate your time. I love what you're doing, and thank you for joining the show.
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