The Civic Center mall is nearly dead. The city is looking to revitalize it

When James Sears came back to work in the Los Angeles Mall in the fall of 2022, he hoped he wouldn’t be alone. He had been away from his shoe repair shop for a year and a half.

The mall, across the street from City Hall in the Civic Center, was a wasteland, its walkways empty, the food court and most restaurants locked or boarded up. Except for some palms and other trees, the landscaping had been reduced to dirt. The fountains were dry.

Sears, 81, tried to be patient. He dusted the counters and chairs. He cleaned up where there had been a water leak, and he waited. But no one came. One day, he posted a handwritten note and slid shut the steel gate.

CLOSED

Will reopen when people start to wear shoes.

Sears’ decision reflects a truth about downtown Los Angeles that is forcing small businesses, landlords and property managers to think hard about the future. With buildings standing empty and shops still boarded up, the traditional use of space is no longer viable.

James Sears inside his shoe repair shop on Flower Street in the Financial District. Sears had another shoe repair store in the Los Angeles Mall across from City Hall, but it is closed now.

Sears repairs a heel in his shop.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles Mall is unique in both design and ownership. It is located below street level — two sunken courtyards connected by a broad tunnel under Temple Street — and is owned and managed by the city of Los Angeles, which once counted on the income from tenants like Sears.

Sears has stopped paying rent, and while the city has forgiven what he owes, its Department of Water and Power has not. His past-due for utilities is about $4,000, he said.

Absent any activity, his shop stands frozen in time: a commendation from the city and a photograph of his father on the wall, racks of shoe polish, laces and an empty gumball machine.

The city is “welcome to do what they want with it,” he said. “But what are they going to do?”

The city is wrestling with that question, which is relevant not just for Sears’ shop but also for the mall and the Civic Center, roughly 12 blocks around City Hall with courts, police and sheriff’s headquarters and city transportation, records and licensing agencies.

“The pandemic has changed many things related to work in the city of Los Angeles,” said Blair Miller, a principal project coordinator with the Los Angeles Department of Economic and Workforce Development. “It may continue to alter how we work going forward, compared to before the pandemic.”

A man eats lunch in the deserted Los Angeles Mall.

Miller also leads her department’s real estate group, whose responsibilities include evaluating surplus and underutilized properties — at the request of the City Council — that have potential for redevelopment.

Once bustling with city employees — and residents needing city services — these few blocks lying in the shadow of City Hall have been made desolate by telecommuting options and online access to municipal departments. The customers who supported the mall have largely disappeared, and few believe they will ever come back.

“Used to be that you couldn’t walk out there without bumping into somebody,” said Sears. “It was that crowded.”

Sears’ father, David, opened the shop in 1987 for his son to run. It was the family’s second shoe repair shop. The city charged about $800 in rent, and during a good year, Sears earned up to $90,000 before expenses.

Sears Shoe Repair remains closed in the Los Angeles Mall.

Sears remembers when mayors — Tom Bradley, and later Richard Riordan — passed by and when then-LAPD Chief William Bratton needed a repair. Business first started to drop off when longtime customers retired and no one took their place, he said.

Now, since the COVID-19 pandemic — with a decreased need for office space and an increased need for housing — the city may want to start to think about “repurposing the Los Angeles Mall and surrounding properties … whether they could be reused in a way that revitalizes the whole area,” Miller said.

Proposals for the redevelopment of the Civic Center go back almost 30 years, but the 2013 closing of Parker Center, the former LAPD headquarters, led to an ambitious plan that called for new offices, apartments and retail space linked by a series of paseos east into Little Tokyo.

The plan, unveiled in 2017, was shelved just before the pandemic, a fortuitous turn that is now allowing planners to adapt to a radically different city.

The Los Angeles Mall downtown is nearly dead.

A new report and analysis is expected to be presented to the City Council early next year, said Miller.

Opened in 1975, the mall was the Civic Center’s crown jewel.

Almost two blocks long, between First Street and the 101 Freeway, the mall took $70 million and 17 years to complete, part of an ambitious overhaul that included the construction of the 18-story City Hall East.

Critics argued at the time that a municipally owned and operated shopping mall would never work, but the Los Angeles Mall opened with a nearly 80% occupancy rate.

Its success was attributed not only to the number of people working in the Civic Center (36,000, second only to that it Washington, D.C.) but also in details meant to entice shoppers. Artists were commissioned to design sculptures and water features. The subtropical landscaping cost more than $6 million.

John Sheppard, retired senior real estate officer for the city of Los Angeles, stands in the street-level courtyard above the Los Angeles Mall.

John Sheppard, a retired senior real estate manager for the city, was fascinated by the mall after moving to Los Angeles from Washington, D.C., almost 40 years ago.

The fountains were flowing. A street musician played to lunchtime crowds, and during the holidays, lights festooned the parapets.

“Nothing has changed but its obsolescence,” he said. “It’s still functional, just not popular.”

The mall is an elegy for what mid-20th-century politicians and progressives imagined downtown Los Angeles could be: a city with a vibrant core, accessible by freeways, anchored by a City Hall with encomiums inscribed above entrances exalting the public good.

Time is frozen on the face of the antique clocks positioned in the courtyards. The towering Triforium, the art piece that brought music and lighting to the public space, is quiet. Drought has withered the palms, and the escalators are still.

Some customers still make their way down the stairs. At lunch, Rafiq Karim does brisk business at the Lotto convenience store, its windows covered with announcements of “big winners.” For anyone buying scratchers, he will happily wave his hand over the cards for good luck.

Karim has worked here for 15 years, cutting back his hours when foot traffic fell off. By midafternoon, he’s often ready to close.

A Mediterranean restaurant is one of the few remaining businesses in the Los Angeles Mall.

Bob’s Big Boy is now California Pita, whose grand opening in 2007 occasioned a commendation from then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The manager, Manuel Arvea, 38, has worked here for six years. He wishes that parking were less expensive and that the city would open up the restrooms for those living on the streets, who often sleep on the benches.

Repurposing has been the city’s approach to the vacancies. The Children’s Museum is now an interim homeless shelter. The CVS is now a storage facility. The Hallmark store houses the city’s Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department.

Other city departments — mail services, moving services, the city employee benefits association — work out of former stores and provide a glimpse of what the future might be.

“We’re exploring whether it’s financially feasible to convert some of the other space into hoteling space for city employees,” said Yolanda Chavez, an assistant city administrative officer.

Hoteling — when employees have a common work space rather than dedicated desks — would better accommodate “the new world we work in,” she said.

The city is about to issue a telecommuting policy. Once departments work out their schedules, Chavez said, her team will reallocate office space in the mall.

The city is looking to revitalize the Los Angeles Mall.

Some city employees have been working in leased buildings throughout downtown. The mall provides an opportunity to eliminate that expense.

“We’re trying to make the best use of our city space so that we’re not paying for private leases,” said Chavez.

By realigning the workforce, the city is forcing a greater question about the Civic Center. While the first impulse — given the housing crisis in Los Angeles — may be to build more housing, followed by commercial and retail development, there are other factors to consider, Miller said.

If city employees return to the Civic Center, businesses like Sears Shoe Repair might see more customers. But a civic center isn’t just a commercial destination. It is an expression of how civic leaders and citizens frame a city’s identity.

Creating that identity today, said Miller, is “a balancing act.”

“We need to take a look at what makes effective city government — in terms of the public accessing services, in terms of interaction of city employees, building relationships and knowledge across departments,” she said. “Once you’re looking at that, then you need to ask: How does your space work with that?”

Meanwhile, Sears, who scoffs at the idea of retirement, goes to work each day at the store his father opened in 1973 on Flower Street in the Financial District. Business is better there, he said.

Whatever the city’s plan, he hopes to keep a store in the Civic Center and would like to be relocated on street level, where more customers will find him — once they “start to wear shoes” again.