Get in There, Tiger!

State of Hollywood Address
Hollywood Chamber of Commerce
Roosevelt Hotel
January 24, 2008

Eric Garcetti
Los Angeles City Council President;
Councilmember, Council District 13

Two weeks ago, we said goodbye to Hollywood’s best friend.

Johnny Grant arrived in town at the tail end of Hollywood’s First Golden Age and helped usher in the beginning of a Second One.

In a town built on dreams, Johnny dreamed some of our biggest. But Johnny had more than dreams for Hollywood. He had an immovable faith in Hollywood and understood that dreams come true only through hard work. Johnny hung on until his faith and hard work changed the face of our town.

There is a tremendous absence in this room today, but there is an even greater presence on the streets of a neighborhood that Johnny helped renew.

In that spirit, I say to you today that the State of Hollywood is strong. And as we continue a legacy of dreams, of faith, and of hard work, we will make it even stronger.

This is my seventh year before you at this podium. I never fail to breathe in the warmth, the depth, and the breadth of community in this room. For the last six and a half years, I have treasured the moments we have all spent together in friendship and in hard work. It reminds me of the words of British writer Maria Edgeworth, who once said “If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.”

So allow me to grab this moment in time, as we look to the years ahead, to share with you a future for Hollywood, and to talk to you about the work that remains to be done.

I see ahead of us a Hollywood that is first and foremost, a great neighborhood.

A great neighborhood is a place that’s a world-class tourist, entertainment, and shopping destination. A great neighborhood is a place where kids can be safe, play in community parks, and succeed in great schools. A great neighborhood helps support businesses and rewards hard-working families. It expands opportunity and fosters a culture of giving back.

I’m going to talk today about what we’ve accomplished together in the past year and our commitment to this community and the dreams that we share for its future.

So let’s take a look at the work we’ve done in 2007.

To date, the City of Los Angeles has used $700 million in public money to attract $5.5 billion dollars in private investment. In the past seven years, we have accomplished a lot. But some of our biggest plans have only been dreams drafted in blueprints. This past year, that changed.

Today, there is no more beautiful sight in our neighborhood than the flock of cranes over Hollywood. I love those cranes. I love them because they signal the arrival of a great neighborhood reborn, with hundreds of living wage jobs for Angelenos, a new first-class hotel for visitors, exciting retail for local residents, and much-needed housing. If at Hollywood and Vine, the earth has been dug up, across the street, history itself has been unearthed. There, as the Boulevard 6200 Project moves towards a groundbreaking, Clarett and Nederlander have dusted off eighty-year old plans -- found by Robert Nudelman in a storage closet -- for an Art Deco office Tower to complete the vision of the Pantages Theater.

Sunset Boulevard is also changing starting with our new Business Improvement District that came on line in 2007. Technicolor's new complex is rising at Sunset and Gower. There, high-tech entertainment industry jobs will keep “Hollywood the Neighborhood” home to “Hollywood the Industry,” exactly one century after Col. William Selig made Hollywood’s first film.

Down the street, at Sunset and Gordon, there’s a building going up that will reach the Gold Leed standard for environmental design, a mark of rare distinction. The housing there will include affordable, for-sale units, and the new office space will attract new jobs. There’s even a new park for the neighborhood.

Growing up in L.A., I went to concerts just down the street at the world-famous Palladium. For years, we held out and told all comers that we would protect our history from the wrecking ball. This year, I got to announce that Live Nation will bring that venue back to life and restore its glory. Envisioning our future does not mean forgetting our past.

In East Hollywood, another Business Improvement District along Vermont Avenue came online. At Children’s Hospital and Kaiser, two state-of-the-art hospital facilities are under construction. These expansions will provide hundreds of new middle class jobs.

If you look at where we were just a decade ago, this has truly been a watershed year.

Today, Hollywood is helping to keep Los Angeles strong. There’s no question these are tough times. The City of Los Angeles faces a huge budget challenge. Our nation faces a credit crisis. But here in Hollywood, we’ve proven that faith in our dreams and hard work can keep us afloat during even the most difficult times. And in the coming year, I am going to keep Hollywood on track and bring about more investment that is the engine of opportunity in our great neighborhood. I’m going to bring you two new programs.

Right now, a major project must be reviewed by up to twelve city departments for approval. It’s a daunting process that slows down great projects once they have already gotten the green light from City Hall and the community. So, I’m working on a program called “Twelve to Two.” Projects go to planning. They go to building and safety. And you’re done. From twelve city departments to two.

I’m also going to build on our hard-won renewal and expansion of Hollywood's State Enterprise Zone to create our city's first Entertainment Technology District. The District will expand incentives and concentrate new, good jobs with career potential right here, in Hollywood.

I have worked to build a city government that seeks never to impede, but always to empower. We need to know when to get out of the way and we need to know when to pitch in. And we always need to remember to listen, for many of our best ideas have come from hearing your concerns.

You said that the city’s business tax was too high and we listened. Today we have returned more than $100 million to local businesses through tax reform.

You said that graffiti was an endemic problem for residents and businesses alike and we listened. Three years later, we have reduced graffiti by 68 percent in our district.

We are making our dreams a reality.

This past year, Gary Shafner told me about his dream. Gary is a local la businessman who grew up here in Hollywood. After seeing the newest Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas, he wanted to bring the world’s pre-eminent stage company to Hollywood, the entertainment capital of the world. He approached Shaul Kuba at CIM, and together they asked Cirque to open a show here. They got a quick answer: No. They went back again and again and again. They traveled to Canada. I went with them to Las Vegas. Each time, Cirque was flattered, but they gave us the classic Hollywood line: Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Always persistent, Gary and Shaul finally convinced Cirque’s president to just come see Hollywood. I’ll come to Hollywood, he said, “but I’m still going to say no.” But when he got here, and he saw what Hollywood had become, and saw the Kodak Theater and the streets around it, he realized what Gary and Shaul had known all along: that Cirque du Soleil and a renewed Hollywood were a perfect fit. Gary and Shaul had a dream… and great faith in that dream… and were willing to pull off feats as acrobatic as any in the Cirque du Soleil to make them a reality. In November, I was honored to join them to announce a 10-year agreement to bring a brand-new show about the story of Hollywood to the Kodak and hundreds of millions of dollars to our economy. I’ll see you on opening night.

Some dreams are born from whimsical imagination, others are born out of cold reality.

Joel Roberts, the executive director of people assisting the homeless, or PATH, had a dream to bring our community together to wage a compassionate and effective fight against homelessness. Joel found a powerful ally: the Hollywood business community. Just as the Hollywood Chamber backed project YIMBY to provide a positive voice to address homelessness, Kerry Morrison and other business leaders stepped up, and in 2007 the HERO teams were born. Today, HERO teams hit the streets and reach out to Homeless people throughout Hollywood. Next week we will vote on a new housing program we have developed to give homeless families and individuals the ability to rent housing and get the services they need to get their lives on track. HERO teams and the housing program together will help Hollywood’s homeless get off the street once and for all. We’re moving from managing homelessness in Hollywood to ending it.

For some a dream is finding a place to live. For others, it’s finding their first good job.

This past October, I helped open The Hollywood Worksource Center on the campus of Los Angeles City College, connecting education to job placement. The day I was there, I saw a young man run up to a Worksource Center employee shouting, “I got the job! I got the job!” It was clear that day that his dream came true.

Time and again, we in Hollywood have been told “No”… or “it can’t be done.” And time and again we proved these naysayers wrong.

Hollywood Central Park is another example of a visionary dream and we made big progress this year in Sacramento and Washington toward making it a reality. A park to unify a neighborhood over the 101 Freeway is simple and it’s brilliant. And I hope you will join me this Saturday at 9 am for our first Hollywood Central Park community meeting at Selma Elementary School.

Part of my dream for my district has always been the creation of new parks, both great and small. When I was first elected in 2001, I promised to double the thirteen parks in my district. Today we have thirty-three.

The most recent park we opened bears the name of Seily Rodriguez, an eight-year-old girl attending Santa Monica Boulevard Community Charter School when she was struck and killed by a car in january 2005. The park is nestled between apartment buildings in Seily’s neighborhood, where more than 30,000 people are packed into each square mile. When we dedicated the park last month, hundreds of kids and their families walked to their new neighborhood park. Seily’s life was cut short, but the joy in the faces of the children who play in her park will honor her memory for years to come.

For me, the creation of parks has always been about the creation of safe spaces for families and young people. But last year, on the eastern edge of my district, a 16 year-old girl was shot in the back and killed just two blocks from the Glassell Park Recreation Center. To prevent more tragic losses in the neighborhood, I started a program called At The Park After Dark, which kept the Rec Center open well into the night during the summer.

Neighborhood kids could come to skateboard, play sports, paint, learn how to DJ or MC, and hang out in a safe, supervised place. This summer, I want to bring At The Park After Dark to Hollywood, and I need you to help me because the threat to our young people is all too real. I celebrate the amazing work that we have all done—LAPD, the business community, City Hall, our schools and community groups—to make 2007 the safest year in Los Angeles in fifty years.

But we need to do our part to prevent more tragic losses. One life lost is too many and some of you joined me last year at vigils for students as young as 14 from schools like Virgil, Fairfax and Hollywood who lost their lives. At The Park After Dark kept kids safe in Glassell Park. And it can keep kids safe here, too. I need your help to keep facilities open at Lemon Grove Park this Summer. And I need your help to keep Hollywood Rec Center open and safe as well. You don’t have to write a check today, although I’m certainly not going to stop you. But please, take a look at the flyer on your table and join us in expanding this program. We need these parks open at night so that our young people can live to fulfill their promise and their dreams.

Let me dedicate this speech today to Johnny Grant. He was a dreamer, he was a believer, and he was a doer. He had dreams for Hollywood and he got them done. What are your dreams for Hollywood? What are you going to do this year to make them come true?

As Johnny once said “Hollywood is big enough for everyone’s dreams.”

Gene Autry used to call Johnny affectionately “tiger” or “tig” For short.

Johnny in turn passed on that nickname to a few of us in this room. The last time I saw Johnny was at Will Smith’s Hand and Footprint ceremony in December. He was his usual self—on-time, funny, generous. As the ceremony finished, we stood to the side as photographers took pictures of Will Smith with various people until Johnny turned to me with a smile and said, “Don’t stand here, get in there, Tig!”

You see, Johnny didn’t believe that any of us should stand by the sidelines. He believed we should be in the middle of it all. The golden age we are experiencing is not an accident of history. This golden age is in us, and to make it happen is our responsibility to the next generation of dreamers. That means our dreams must be big enough, grand enough to honor Hollywood’s history and to write its next chapter. We must never lose faith in those dreams. And, like Johnny did, we must all do the hard work to make it happen. We’ve all got a lot of work to do to make Hollywood’s dreams come true.

So I say to all of you: “Get in there, Tig.”

AMONGST THE STARS

In Hollywood, we’re through speaking of comebacks. We’re already back. -- Eric Garcetti

State of Hollywood Address
Hollywood Chamber of Commerce
Roosevelt Hotel
January 25, 2007

Eric Garcetti
Los Angeles City Council President;
Councilmember, Council District 13

This past Labor Day, I took a walk with my father.
We re-traced the footsteps taken by our city’s founders, the pobladores.
Blessed by an Indian prayer, we started before the sun rose in San Gabriel and walked nine miles to the west until we reached Olvera street, next to the L.A. River, the site of our city’s founding settlement.

The Los Angeles River is central to our city’s origin. Its full name is el rio de nuestra senora de los angeles de porciuncula.

It was there, some years before the pobladores’ walk, that father Juan Crespi looked upon the verdant banks, gave us our name and said, here we will build a great mission.

You know the end of the story.
Or rather, you know that the story has no end.

Unlike San Gabriel, or San Juan Capistrano, or Santa Barbara, Los Angeles never built a mission—but a village, a pueblo, was born that we all now call home.

A few miles to the west of El Pueblo, almost ninety years later, another village was born in the foothills to the south of the Cahuenga pass.

It was built by men and women whose last names were Wilcox and Cole, who named the streets after their sons and daughters, like Ivar and Selma, even a friend named Mrs. Highland Price.

The earliest settlers were farmers, and on this frostless and fertile stretch of land, they grew lemons and oranges, strawberries and roses, raised sheep and cattle and grew the first avocado in the state. In 1871, the first neighborhood business opened—a Chinese laundry and grocery where Sunset and Cahuenga now meet. Those were two unique moments in Los Angeles history, when the future spread out, unknowable but bright.

In 2007, as we assess the state of Hollywood and the city beyond, we also stand at a uniquely bright moment in our history.

We have the lowest crime we’ve known since 1956.
We have the lowest unemployment rate since 1976.
And we are in the strongest financial shape of any big city in the country.
Taken together, these three things are the foundation for our prosperity.

But what will we do with that prosperity?
Who are we?
Who do we want to be?
And while Crespi’s mission was never built brick by brick, we now ask how will we build our mission, block by block.

In Hollywood, we’re through speaking of comebacks. We’re already back.

The state of Hollywood today is leading Los Angeles.
Showing the whole city how to do it right.

Hollywood shows how our big city begins with a great small town.
Hollywood is not ours: it is everyone’s. On the boulevard, the whole world is at home.
Our community, Hollywood, is the blueprint for a great Los Angeles.

Here, we know how to build a new urban infrastructure.
Here, we epitomize partnership
And here, we have shown what a pro-business environment can do.

First. The infrastructure.

A city choked by traffic has finally said enough is enough. The Westside wants a subway to the sea and the Valley and Eastside and South Los Angeles want an end to gridlock.

Here in Hollywood we have a subway. We have rapid bus lines. We even have the Holly Trolley and pedestrian-oriented streets.

We’ve got parking, too, not as an end unto itself, but as something to support our housing, businesses and leisure. We have thousands of spaces in well-run lots, ready to be managed efficiently.

We’ve invested in an infrastructure of saftey, too. Our police captains have taken advantage of new technology, like safety cameras, and a strong community, with leaders who have made Hollywood one of the city’s safest neighborhoods.

Second: our public-private partnerships are a model for our city.

Our Community Redevelopment Agency has taken a public investment of $642 million dollars and brought in $3.3 billion in private investment.

Kaiser and Children's hospitals have invested in new buildings, community partnerships, and local hiring. In their research centers, diseases will be cured, in their hospitals, lives will be saved.

We’ve seen construction of the first high school built in Hollywood in 80 years. Five other new schools are under construction or finished and our city college is rewriting its curriculum and rebuilding its campus.

Our business improvement districts have set the citywide standard for property owner activism: This year, the Hollywood entertainment district celebrates its 10th anniversary and the media district continues its good work as well. And even more exciting, this year we inaugurate two new business improvement districts: one at Sunset and Vine, the other along the Vermont corridor.

Lastly, we’ve fought for and defended a business environment that fosters growth.

The Chamber fought for tax reform. The Garcetti-Greuel Plan delivered it. We have returned $92 million to Los Angeles businesses. That money has been invested in jobs.
It’s been invested in better lives.

The Nielsen Company saw what we could do and chose Hollywood, bringing more than two hundred jobs at average salaries of greater than $70,000.

And I worked with the governor to successfully renew and expand Hollywood’s state enterprise zone, rewarding businesses great and small for expanding in the community and hiring in the community.

Business is here in Hollywood to stay and to grow.
And to do business in Hollywood, you must understand that content is king.

Our infrastructure, our partnerships, our business atmosphere have allowed creativity to flourish. We’ve created profit. We’ve created investment. And most importantly, we’ve created quality of life.

Take music, for example.
In a single neighborhood, in a quarter mile, you can sign your record deal at Capitol Records.
You can record your album at Ocean Way
You can buy the album at Amoeba Records.
Or you can see it performed live at the Palladium or the Music Box, at Safari Sam’s or at the Hotel Café.

For you foodies,
You can walk through Southern California’s largest open-air farmer’s market each Sunday.
You can visit Los Angeles’ best restaurants
You could even work alongside the most famous chef in the world, at Wolfgang Puck’s corporate headquarters.

And what would Hollywood be without movies?
You can make 'em at Paramount Studios, who shot Dreamgirls entirely here in L.A.
You can “fix 'em in post” at Technicolor, who recently broke ground on its eight-story state of the art facility at Sunset Gower studios
And you can see 'em at Arclight Cinemas, or Grauman’s Chinese, or El Capitan—the best movie houses in our land.

This is not just a good time. This is how we make the good life.
There’s room for everyone: the tourist who has more to see than ever before, the resident, who has a good job in her own neighborhood, and the movie star, moving into a Hollywood Boulevard loft, where movie stars have not lived for 80 years.

But this is not an isolated dream: our community of Hollywood has drawn the blueprint for a livable Los Angeles. A blueprint for a city where you can live near where you work near where you play.

A city where the hours you don’t have to spend in your car, you can spend with your family.
A city where children can go to school near where they lay their heads. Where they can find places to play like Yucca Park. There we built a new soccer field in a park that just a few years ago could have been overrun by gang members--but we didn’t let it happen.

In Hollywood, we showed them a comeback with a conscience.
There is one project that brings this all together: the mixed-use, half-billion dollar hotel-retail-residential development called Hollywood and Vine.

Hollywood and Vine. This year, the most famous intersection in the world stood for the intersection of Hollywood’s past and Hollywood’s future.

A year ago, many of us did not know where those two roads met.
It took a lot of meetings, a lot of phone calls, and a lot of midnight oil to make Hollywood and vine the best project it could be.

But we did it, and I want to thank the redevelopment agency, Bob Blue, Legacy Partners and Gatehouse Capital for keeping your eyes on the prize.

Just five years ago, Hollywood and Vine meant crime, blight, and decay. In the 2000 census, families living near this project had average incomes between $19,000 and $23,000 a year.

Today, we’re bringing 200 living-wage, union hotel jobs; 400 units of mixed-income housing; and community shopping, all right next to the Red Line.

On February 12th, I invite you to join me as we break ground on our future at Hollywood and Vine.

We still dream big in Hollywood.
The Chamber was critical in proposing one of our bigger dreams.
Time was you could buy an acre for $1.25 in Hollywood.
Today, that acre could cost north of 8 million dollars.
So why not build land out of thin air?
It costs less, today, to create a park in the air than it does to purchase the land on the ground.

Today we look at the air above the Hollywood Freeway. We’ve imagined a Hollywood Central Park, a green belt uniting us where now we are separated, ranging anywhere from 24 to 35 acres, potentially larger than Pan Pacific Park.

Yes, Hollywood, we still dream big dreams.
There’s no better view of what it means to dream in Hollywood than a star ceremony.
And there was none that moved me this year more than that of Hilary Swank.
This was the year she won her second Oscar. Years ago, as a new arrival in our town, Hilary slept in a car. Her mother fed dimes into the pay phone to keep prospective agents on the line.

She said that she never dreamed that she would have a star on the Walk of Fame.
Her success is part of our thrill. It’s part of our advertisement to the world: see a star. Be a star. But it’s not the end of our story.

All of us have dreams. Not all of us will be movie stars.
Maybe we dream that we can find a job that pays a living wage, so we can work one job, instead of two or three.
Maybe we dream that our children will go to a school near where they live, or have a park they can walk to.

Maybe we dream like some of our neighbors that we won’t have to sleep in our car tonight.
Our vision must be big and bold enough to make each of these dreams come true.
I want to congratulate my colleague Tom LaBonge on the reopening of our landmark Griffith Observatory. From there, you can see the universe sparkle above us. But you can also gaze down at the beauty of our neighborhood and its people.

Our Hollywood is not about the brightest stars. It’s about the entire constellation of our community, assembled in this room right here today.
Constellations are about connections, between one another, between individuals, between institutions, within a neighborhood council.
I like to walk our streets and make those connections.

This year, near Santa Monica and Normandie, I walked with Father Rodel and 100 parishioners of Immaculate Heart Church in East Hollywood.
That day, I spoke to a young man in his apartment who walks around with a bullet in his chest. Last year, he was shot, late at night, coming home from work at the wrong time on his block.

Hollywood, I ask you again:
What is our mission?
What kind of city will we inspire?

For that young man and those who still struggle, we must rebuild our city, starting in our small town.

I have seen the dreams of our small town spring forth in every corner of Hollywood these past five years.

I saw these dreams in Lemon Grove Park last year.
Lemon Grove Park is a working-class park on the south and east side of Hollywood.
A few years ago, no one much used it.
Then we found money for street lights. Planted some trees with the community. Got a security camera for the park.
It got safer. We hired a rec center director with a big heart.
One night, last year, in a safer park, in a neighborhood that no one had much thought about for a very long time, the rec director brought an outdoor nature program to lemon grove.

A few dozen local kids, who’d never been to Big Bear, or to Mammoth, or even to Catalina, slept around a campfire.
And they didn’t just sleep—they dreamed.
Under the stars.
Amongst the stars.
In Hollywood.

Thank you.

About Eric Garcetti - A fourth-generation Angeleno, Garcetti was first elected to the City Council in 2001, becoming one of the youngest city council members in the City’s history. In December 2005, he was unanimously elected as Council President. He prides himself on starting the meetings on time and getting the public’s business done in an open and effective fashion.

Garcetti chairs the Rules and Elections Committee. He also serves as Vice-Chair of the Energy and the Environment Committee and sits on the Housing, Community, and Economic Development Committee, which he chaired for four-and-a half years. He is also the vice-chair of the Ad Hoc River Committee and the Ad Hoc Homelessness Committee, and serves on the Ad Hoc Stadium Committee.

This past year, he announced his proposed "12-2" initiative to simplify the entitlement process for proposed developments, and also created a new Council committee to deal with business issues - the Jobs, Business Growth and Tax Reform Committee.

The Los Angeles Business Journal named him one of the 25 Angelenos who stand out for their potential to shape lives in Los Angeles. A profile in Los Angeles magazine in 2006 called him “a rising star”.

He represents the 13th Council District, which stretches from Echo Park to Hollywood.