senior living in downtown

Tuesday, August 24, 2004, at 06:12AM

By Eric Richardson

The LA Times today has an article on Angelus Plaza, the senior housing project right in the middle of downtown. I've wondered about how such a large project can survive in the midst of the renewed development taking place right now, and this article gets a little into its history. I had no idea that Angelus Plaza was 24 years old. The articles quotes a lady who's lived there since the project opened:

"Nothing was built here. I saw all these buildings grow," Medina said, recalling that when she arrived, workers hadn't even finished the sidewalks.

Downtown, including the skyscraper developments of the 80s, have grown around Angelus Plaza. The new development and the resurgence of downtown as a destination have happened around Angelus Plaza. Though I don't like the sprawling footprint or the somewhat blank look of the Plaza, I'm perfectly ok with having such a project downtown... how could I not be? They're people who came to downtown when no one else was coming. We came later. We can't try to drive them out, they want what we want. They want the best for the neighborhood. They want revival, they want people on the streets.

When I moved away from USC and moved downtown, I became excited about living out in the real world. What makes it the real world? A mix of ages and social classes. I don't want to live in a downtown comprised entirely of young loft-dwellers. Yes, there's a lot of downtown that needs to change, but this isn't one of those parts.