The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to create a Grand Avenue Cultural District to boost the visibility of the arts scene in a corridor of downtown that includes the Broad museum, Center Theatre Group, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, REDCAT and the Colburn School.
The Music Center spearheaded the effort, and L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis, in whose district the Grand Avenue venues lie, was an early champion.
“We’re envisioning having an app and a website, so it’s one-stop shopping for somebody coming to town,” said Music Center President and Chief Executive Rachel Moore, adding that the cultural district will be a nonprofit with its own office and executive director. The group plans to offer packages for hotels, restaurants, shows and museums.
“I am hoping that by the time the Olympics come around, people will know who we are, and that we’re friendly and welcoming,” said Moore. “It will be an easy way to experience the arts in L.A. without having to cobble it together by yourself.”
The Grand Avenue Cultural District was “designed to promote greater public participation in the arts, stimulate economic growth, increase tourism, create workforce development opportunities, support the revitalization of DTLA and position the area as a global arts destination,” a news release said.
For almost two decades, supporters have pushed to transform Grand Avenue into an arts district. In 2007, the city and county approved the Grand Avenue Project, which aimed to revitalize the area beginning with a massive upgrade of Grand Park. It also envisioned a mixed-use residential complex designed by Frank Gehry. The park, which connects the Music Center to City Hall, debuted in 2012, but the Grand by Gehry wasn’t completed until 2022, by which time the pandemic and the employer shift toward remote work had cut foot traffic in the area.
One bright spot came last year, when the artist Refik Anadol announced he would open the world’s first museum of AI arts in the Grand complex, which sits across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall. Also announced last year: an expansion of the Broad museum, next to Disney Hall, with groundbreaking scheduled for next week. Eli and Edythe Broad, who opened their contemporary art museum in 2015, were longtime proponents of a formal arts corridor.
The Grand Avenue Cultural District will stretch between the Los Angeles Central Library in the south and Los Angeles Unified School District’s Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts to the north.
“Once we get our footing and the infrastructure in place, we can see expanding it further,” said Moore, citing organizations not on Grand such as La Plaza de Cultura y Artes and the Japanese American National Museum. “We want it to be a destination not rigidly defined just by a street, but we need to walk before we run.”
A year ago the Colburn School began work on the Gehry-designed Colburn Center — a 100,000-square-foot expansion expected to be completed by 2027. The Olympics will arrive in summer 2028, and with it, the Cultural Olympiad, with its mission of highlighting the city’s wealth of arts offerings. If the new Grand Avenue Cultural District has anything to say about it, visitors from around the world will be dropped off by the busload in the heart of downtown L.A.