Plan Area 4

Plan Area 4 is the sequel to Area 51 — alien beings have assimilated into Downtown Los Angeles, specifically City Hall, but then all the good people of City Hall rise up to force them to return to their home planet. There is no violence so Plan Area 4 is rated PG.

Plan Area 4 is also a concept from the Department of City Planning merging parts of Skid Row, Little Tokyo, and the Arts District in their latest DTLA 2040 revision: “DTLA 2040 Draft Plan Concepts For Skid Row: proposed as part of the update to the Downtown Community Plan”. This is a work in progress that will continue working for many more months.

Recently I took a tour of a building just north of 5th and San Pedro and the real estate agent said there’s no plan for south of 5th Street but there is one for north of 5th Street and the whole area will be Little Tokyo. That’s not a shocker because Little Tokyo Lofts across the street anchors the narrative that 3rd to 5th is Little Tokyo.

But he’s wrong to say there is no plan for south of 5th. That is Plan Area 2 and Plan Area 2 does not allow for market rate housing.

For many years the commonly understood boundaries of Skid Row have been, and the boundaries for the proposed Skid Row Neighborhood Council are, 3rd to the north, Main to the west, 7th to the south, and Alameda to the east. Plan Area 4 could be interpreted as a concept bomb blowing up those boundaries.

But there is a secret weapon here that really isn’t secret. For several years the grassroots nickname for the 3rd street area has been Skidrokyo. A Japanese American gentleman had a vision for a T-shirt of Godzilla wearing sunglasses stomping through DTLA with the word Skidrokyo.