The Content Campus

Opened last month, L.A Live, with its two concert halls, an ESPN Zone/broadcast studio, a bowling alley, movie theaters, ten restaurants, Grammy Museum, and condos, is being called a "content campus" by Business Week.  Its developers call it an entertainment campus. The complex cost $2.5 billion and is in downtown LA next door to the city's convention center and near Staples Center.  Two hotels are planned to complete the project.

I've been thinking for some time about the next generation of civic amenities.  We actually did some interesting work on this at the CEOs for Cities national meeting in Pittsburgh last spring.  The reinvention of civic amenities also underlies at least part of the discussion on anchor institutions.  This morning I got a new year's message from Paul Holdengraber, the brilliant producer of New York Public Library Live!, and was reminded of his exciting presentation at the CEOs for Cities meeting in San Jose where he attempted to challenge and stretch the role of anchor institutions in the civic life of communities.

L.A. Live isn't it, of course, although it's an interesting commercial expression of mixed use fun.  What would a real content campus look like?  And is it the next evolution of civic amenity?

  

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