Buddy The Elf
Kings!
A part of me misses easy parking adjacent to Staples, but looking at the bigger picture, parking lots are dead zones in urban environments...you certainly don't see the volume of parking lots in NYC, SF, Chi etc that you do in downtown LA.
There's some serious Shanhai-ification going on downtown right now. That project that is under construction right across from Staples is pretty gaudy.
Yeah, that thing is going to be a beast. It really is remarkable how much the area has changed since Staples was developed. Hell, i remember when they dug that massive hole to start LA live. We used to drink beers there when it was a parking lot. I would save all my bottles for Larry the Homeless guy. I even bought him a Christmas present one year. That was probably around 2004 or so.
I remember Diehard King Fan (old poster here) was saying AEG owned swaths of land between Staples and Union Station and planned to develop everything between the two. It looks like anyone else who owns property in the area is doing the same thing. Spring Street was completely gentrified 7 or 8 years ago (maybe longer). The Financial district has been cleaned up for a while now. I guess Broadway is currently undergoing the restoration of lots of the old theaters which I think is awesome. It's a shame they are almost all bodegas and souvenir shops right now. But I do miss the days of easy parking. I'm sure it's getting annoying if you spend any amount of time down there now with how congested it's getting.