Both Downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood are set for new phases of urban reincarnation. L.A. Live, a $2.5 billion mixed-use sports and entertainment development comprising six blocks across the street from the Los Angeles Convention Center, has reinvigorated interest in downtown real estate. New hotels and residential developments are emerging left and right. Hollywood is likewise headed for its next plateau. The Kodak Theatre is now the permanent home for the annual Academy Awards ceremonies. Cirque de Soleil is designing a show just for the Kodak that is scheduled for a 10-year run. In the eyes of many, Hollywood is even hotter than hot, and the possibilities are limitless.
The two locales are also going green. The Los Angeles Convention Center is one of the most eco-conscious venues of its kind, and more L.A. event facilities across the board are incorporating environmentally sound policies. In October, the convention center will host the second annual GreenXchange Xpo, a global marketplace raising awareness about sustainability issues.
And with gas prices in California shooting through the roof, people in Los Angeles are even taking the subway in record numbers. Since one can go back and forth between downtown and Hollywood in just 20 minutes, public transportation has become a factor more than ever when planning an event in those locales, and gatherings often incorporate both areas of town.
Downtown Los Angeles
The basic scoop on L.A. is no secret in the business.
“Because L.A. is the entertainment capital, we have very creative event planners,” explains Carole Martinez, associate vice president of media relations and communications for LA Inc., The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. “If you want to use red carpet, there are miles and miles of it, and there are props from TV shows and movies. That all works really well for meetings.
“The other thing is that because L.A. County and the five-county area around us have such a large population base, oftentimes groups that are meeting in L.A. set attendance records because they have a lot of local people,” she adds. “And our airport serves the world, so anybody from anywhere can get here.”
L.A. Live’s initial phase debuted last year with the opening of the Nokia Theatre, a 7,100-seat, 210,000-square-foot concert venue that will be the new home of the Primetime Emmy Awards.
“The Nokia Theatre has been a huge hit with our corporate customers, which is an interesting point,” says Michael Krouse, LA Inc.’s vice president of convention sales. “It’s essentially a plug-and-play kind of a facility, so in addition to doing concerts and special events, for a convention you can use it as a general session location, so people have really gotten excited about it. Microsoft is an example of somebody who used it. A lot of our conventions are now buying that venue.”
The next phase of L.A. Live opens later this year and includes ESPN’s new West Coast broadcast headquarters, the brand-new Grammy Museum, Lucky Strike Bowling Lanes, and Club Nokia, a venue similar to House of Blues. Throw in a dozen restaurants and loads of office space and it all looks pretty enticing, even before the final stage, which comes in late 2009 or early 2010 with L.A. Live’s completed signature monument: a 54-story JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton Hotel and Residencies, all on the same property. The Ritz-Carlton will be a 123-room “all club” hotel on the upper floors of the tower.
“What makes it neat to a conventioneer, and why our bookings have been so great, is because now a convention has all these things that perhaps it didn’t have in the past,” Krouse says. “It’s all right there. You can throw a ball at it. It’s that close.”
Invigorated by L.A. Live, several other high-density urban residential developments are emerging, and depending on who you ask, downtown’s population has grown to somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 despite the housing crunch.
“Now when you walk down streets that used to be rolled up later in the evening, you see all these people out walking their dogs and ‘strollering’ their kids around,” Krouse says. “You just have a whole different vibe in the sense of an after-work kind of crowd. It used to be that people would get in their cars and drive out to the burbs, and that doesn’t happen anymore.
“What that leads into,” he adds, is a change [in attitude] for a conventioneer who in the past might have been led to believe there wasn’t a whole lot to do downtown. The dynamic driven by the housing and so on has certainly caused a big change.”
L.A. is also striving to be the king of all things green, and planners are starting to notice.
Annette M. Suriani, director, PACE Meetings and Exposition, is bringing her convention back to L.A. next January.
“I’m very impressed by the strides the city is making as far as the greening of meetings,” she says. “I was real pleased with that because we’re certainly looking at ways that we can become greener. That’s something very big on my radar.”
Hollywood
Hollywood has been transformed over the past several years with major developments like Hollywood & Highland Center, a massive entertainment, shopping and dining complex, new hotels and impressive restorations of old standby attractions. Like downtown, Hollywood is also expecting more commercial projects to pop up, augmenting the world-renowned hotels and venues it already has. According to Leron Gubler, president and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, the vibe is rocking.
“Hollywood is the hottest spot in Southern California at the moment as far as development,” he says. “There’s more going on in Hollywood than anywhere else. If you want to encourage attendance, Hollywood draws. It sells. People want to come here.”
The great thing about Hollywood is that you never know who you’re going to run into, according to Chris Orr, director of marketing at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel & Spa, which is located in the gargantuan Hollywood & Highland Center next to the Kodak Theatre and features the destination’s largest meeting and convention space.
“You can even hire paparazzi,” he says, “but sometimes if you have a red carpet, paparazzi will just show up anyway, even if they have no idea who’s going to be on the carpet.”
Since anyone can take the subway between Hollywood and downtown in just 20 minutes, the two locales are often touted in the same breath, and planners are incorporating elements of both places when designing their events.
The National Business Travel Association’s (NBTA) 2008 International Convention and Exposition set its all-time attendance record last month at the Los Angeles Convention Center and included Hollywood celebrities who wouldn’t have been available had the show not been in L.A. Actor and comedian Craig Ferguson keynoted one of the lunches and actor Alec Baldwin shared stories and anecdotes from his extensive career during another lunch session.
“[These were people] who were known more for their Hollywood luminary identity as opposed to their business travel identity,” says Hank Roeder, NBTA’s senior vice president, domestic and global operations.
Roeder says the whole event was a quintessential “L.A. and Hollywood way to do it,” pointing to elements of the show’s creative marketing campaign.
“On the Hollywood sign, instead of Hollywood, it said ‘NBTA-wood,’” he says. “Instead of the many, many members of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, we had a star with NBTA on it. It certainly did catch the attention of thousands of business travel professionals throughout the world.”
For More Info
Hollywood COC 323.469.8311 www.hollywoodchamber.net
LA Inc., The Los Angeles CVB 213.624.7300 www.discoverlosangeles.com
