More pushback on downtown L.A.

Some weeks back we posted a Hollywood Reporter piece about film studios being reluctant to hold premieres at the downtown Regal Theaters, part of the L.A. Live complex. They prefer the Westside for all kinds of reasons. Now comes word, also via THR, of resistance to move the American Film Market's annual shindig from Santa Monica to downtown. You read right - people are actually reluctant to leave the beach and trudge to what remains (sorry, boosters) a still-grungy, second-tier urban center. AFM officials are mulling the move.

"If they move downtown I'll really have to question whether I should come at all," said Ruediger Boess, acquisitions head for European broadcaster ProSiebenSat 1. "There are many film markets around the world and the successful ones are the ones that take into consideration their participants," reads a petition being circulated at the AFM to remain in Santa Monica. "We do not want to be packed into soulless places in the middle of a crowded downtown." Jeffrey Beach, CEO for UFO International Productions, said buyers have told him "it's a detriment to move it downtown.

The reality, of course, is that buyers will attend whatever markets provide the best business opportunities. And if that happens to be downtown, so be it. But the pushback does provide a glimpse into the less-than-enthusiastic reactions of out-of-towners to a downtown that remains, to be charitable, a work in progress. As AEG and its loyal cadre of political hacks proceed with plans for a stadium and revamped convention center, it's a point worth noting. Joel Kotkin offers his take:

To be sure, recent years have seen the growth of a central city restaurant scene, and some 30,000 residents now live in the area compared to closer than 20,000 a decade ago. Yet just outside the immediate, highly-subsidized core, population growth in the surrounding parts of central city over the past decade stood at a mere 0.7%, the lowest rate since the 1950s. The vast majority of the region's population growth took place in the far-flung regions of the San Fernando Valley. As an economic engine, downtown LA simply does not warrant the attention, nor the special treatment, that the city's ruling elites give it. For one thing, it represents a far smaller part of the city's economy when you compare it to the urban cores of Washington, D.C., or New York City. Indeed, in New York and D.C. roughly 20% of all employment is in the central core; in Los Angeles it's barely 2.5%.