Notes from Los Angeles

A Downtown News op-ed connects a few dots to paint a strong LA fashion market: a) retail expansion is forcing wholesale development beyond the District’s eastern boundary of San Pedro St., and b) the efforts underway to bring LA Fashion Week back downtown.

I would round it out with c) the news that American Apparel added 2,500 garment manufacturing jobs this year, and d) the gentrification of New York’s Fashion Center, which bodes well for growth in LA.

* See also: Commercial Real Estate Thrives in Downtown L.A.

The largest garment factory in the US – Photo by kodachrome kid

American Apparel is celebrating the milestone of 10,000 worldwide employees, half of whom work in the facility at 7th and Alameda — the largest garment factory in the US.

Since the beginning of the year, the company has hired approximately 3,500 employees worldwide, including over 2,500 manufacturing employees at its “sweatshop free” production facilities in Southern California. American Apparel now manufactures approximately 275,000 garments per day.

Mayor Villaraigosa praises:

Over the past number of years, American Apparel has played an important role in the revitalization of downtown Los Angeles and has created thousands of jobs in the process. With the jobs that American Apparel has created so far this year, we are well on our way towards meeting my goal of creating 100,000 living wage jobs in Los Angeles by 2010.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, as of 2007, the average American Apparel manufacturing employee earned $12 per hour — “$80-120 dollars per day, or roughly $500 per week compared to the $30-40 made daily at most other Los Angeles-based garment factories.”

Note to self: Buy more AA, less Gap.

Get on the bus. Important government workers need the parking meters around Van Nuys civic center.

For months, merchants around the Van Nuys Government Center have complained about city worker-owned cars with “official mileage vehicle” dash placards filling the streets in front of their businesses.

Parking was once a breeze near the cluster of city, state and federal buildings in once-beleaguered downtown Van Nuys.

And during a $31.5 million Van Nuys City Hall makeover five years ago, officials promised shopkeepers ample parking for constituents, city employees and commercial customers.

But despite at least five city parking lots in the vicinity, workers find it more convenient or cheaper to park their rides in front of scores of mom-and-pop stores - all day long without putting any change in the meter.

Downtown News reports that Westside-based McGregor Company submitted something of a placeholder tower to the CRA last week. Few details are offered other than it will be tall and mixed-use.

61-story tower proposed

The McGregor Company is in the early stage of work on a 61-story, mixed-use development near Eighth Street and Grand Avenue. The company brought the project before the Community Redevelopment Agency last Thursday.

Though officials noted that designs could change, initial plans call for 225 condominium units, 200 hotel rooms, 386 parking spaces, 30,000 square feet of retail and 32,000 square feet of restaurant or bar space. The development would rise on the north side of Eighth Street, between Hope Street and Grand Avenue, where a 65-space surface parking lot and a four-story parking structure now sit.

Nearby Park Fifth — another planned mixed-use project — works out to about 10.8 feet per floor, which would place the height of our mystery tower somewhere around 660 feet.

A family of bobcats has moved into a foreclosed Lake Elsinore home

With real estate values plummeting and foreclosed homes sitting empty, a family of bobcats apparently decided the time was right to pounce.

So last week, they slipped out of the parched foothills of Lake Elsinore and into a spacious, vacant home in well-groomed Tuscany Hills.

LAT: With homeowner in doghouse, bobcats move in

A “major effort is underway” to wrest LA Fashion Week from Culver City and bring it back downtown, says the Downtown News. Potential venues include LA Live, a couple of rehabbed Broadway theaters, and the California Market Center.

Downtown’s play for Fashion Week might be bolstered by the efforts of a group of Downtown activists who last year launched a competing slate of runway shows, informally dubbed Downtown Fashion Week. Their events last year, held at the Los Angeles Theatre on Broadway and Vibiana on Main Street, attracted thousands.