The Toy District is a 12-block area in eastern Downtown Los Angeles, bounded by Los Angeles Street on the west, Third and Fifth streets on the north and south and San Pedro Street on the east. [1] [2] It is a multilingual, multicultural area [3] that consists of one- and two-story buildings often painted in pastel shades and is home to roughly five hundred toy- and electronics-related businesses. [4]
Before the arrival of the first toy merchants, the area was considered to be simply a part of skid row – an impoverished area habituated by the homeless – and one contemporary account described it as lying between Third, Fifth and Main streets and the Los Angeles River. Taiwanese and Vietnamese immigrants of Chinese descent opened up the first toy stores in the early 1980s, and at first these merchants sold toys only during holiday periods. Among them was the Woo family, and the most successful entrepreneur of that clan was Charles Woo, born in Hong Kong and settling in Los Angeles as a teenager in 1968. Woo was a physics student at UCLA when he took a summer off to help other family members launch ABC Toys, a wholesale business later operated by Shu Woo. By 1998 Woo and his family owned 10 Toy District buildings and a distribution company, Mega Toys, with $30 million in annual sales. Charles Woo was later considered to be the Toy District's "founding father." Woo said he built up the Toy District by encouraging other Asian-immigrant entrepreneurs who were buying toys from him to open their own businesses in the district. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Predominantly a wholesale district for mid-range to low-end stores nationwide, the 12-block area is also popular with individual bargain hunters. [8] About a thousand shops, stalls and curbside stands fill the bustling area, roughly bounded by 3rd Street on the north, San Pedro Street on the east, 5th Street on the south and Los Angeles Street on the west. Along with toys, the shops are filled with housewares, sporting goods, silk flowers and clothing imported from such places as Thailand and Pakistan as well as China. Ninety percent of the stores sell at wholesale prices. [5] Charles Woo said that he built up volume in his business by halving the 40 to 50 percent markup typically sought by traditional small toy wholesalers. [4]
The growth of the toy industry in this area helped revive these economically stricken areas of Downtown Los Angeles, [6] and the process gave birth to the Toy District, which by 2003 was home to hundreds of resellers of mostly Asian-made toys and other goods, with more than a billion dollars in sales each year. [9] Los Angeles County has emerged as the gateway to most of the toys sold in U.S. retail stores and increasingly abroad. More than five hundred companies make up the toy industry in the county – not only in the Toy District – and they are mainly wholesalers who import dolls, radio-controlled cars and other goods from Pacific Rim countries. They generally are small, and they employ few workers each. [6]
Around 1998, a business improvement district, or BID, was established by property owners in the neighborhood to clean streets and improve security, [4] but by 2009 there was widespread discontent among the owners about the role of the district, which had been paying for trash pickup and security patrols through special assessments on the properties. The Central City East Association, the nonprofit organization that managed the district, had been trying to focus the district's dwindling funds on its contractual duties (i.e. dealing with pedestrian trash as opposed to commercial trash), as a result of which the street-trash problem grew worse. [3] The district went out of business in 2009 when property owners defeated a proposal to renew its mandate. On January 1, 2010, the Central City East Association stopped providing trash removal and other services in the Toy District. Even before that date, cardboard boxes and other garbage began to pile up on neighborhood streets. Workers from the BID had regularly hauled more than five tons of garbage daily from the area. Many landlords cited the poor economy and a dip in the rental market, saying they could not afford the BID's annual dues, which ranged from a few hundred to more than one hundred thousand dollars. [2] [10]
Several factors contributed to the trash problem. Stores received large shipments of merchandise, and some business owners dumped the packing materials on the streets at the end of each day, assuming the city would take care of it. Additionally, many of the district's cramped shops were housed in larger, subdivided storefronts and they did not have ready access to alleys or other areas large enough to hold dumpsters. [2]
The district is also home to a portion of downtown's homeless population, [8] with homeless people sleeping at night on the sidewalks. [11] By 2010 street lights had been stripped of salable metal parts and entire blocks were left in darkness. [12]
Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services. In general, it is the sale of goods in bulk to anyone, either a person or an organization, other than the end consumer of that merchandise. Wholesaling is buying goods in bulk quantity, usually directly from the manufacture or source, at a discounted rate. The retailer then sells the goods to the end consumer at a higher price making a profit.
A skid row, also called skid road, is an impoverished area, typically urban, in English-speaking North America whose inhabitants are mostly poor people "on the skids". This specifically refers to poor or homeless, considered disreputable, downtrodden or forgotten by society. A skid row may be anything from an impoverished urban district to a red-light district to a gathering area for people experiencing homelessness or drug addiction. In general, skid row areas are inhabited or frequented by impoverished individuals and also people who are addicted to drugs. Urban areas considered skid rows are marked by high vagrancy, dilapidated buildings, and drug dens, as well as other features of urban blight. Used figuratively, the phrase may indicate the state of a poor person's life.
Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) contains the central business district of Los Angeles. In addition, it contains a diverse residential area of some 85,000 people, and covers 5.84 sq mi (15.1 km2). A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs. It is also part of Central Los Angeles.
Chinatown is a neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles, California, that became a commercial center for Chinese and other Asian businesses in Central Los Angeles in 1938. The area includes restaurants, shops, and art galleries, but also has a residential neighborhood with a low-income, aging population of about 20,000 residents.
The Historic Core is a district within Downtown Los Angeles includes the world's largest concentration of movie palaces, former large department stores, and office towers, all built chiefly between 1907 and 1931. Within it lie the Broadway Theater District and the Spring Street historic financial district, and in its west it overlaps with the Jewelry District and in its east with Skid Row.
The Los Angeles Fashion District, previously known as the Garment District, is a business improvement district (BID) in, and often cited as a sub-neighborhood of, Downtown Los Angeles. The neighborhood caters to wholesale selling and has more than 4,000 overwhelmingly independently owned and operated retail and wholesale businesses selling apparel, footwear, accessories, and fabrics.
Gallery Row is a neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles designated by the City Council in 2003 to promote the concentration of art galleries along Main Street and Spring Street.
The Wholesale District or Warehouse District in Downtown Los Angeles, California, has no exact boundaries, but at present it lies along the BNSF and Union Pacific Railroad lines, which run parallel with Alameda Street and the Los Angeles River. Except for some ancillary commercial uses, its cityscape is mostly occupied by warehouses and refrigerated storage facilities. This area is known as Central City North in the Los Angeles city zoning map.
J. W. Robinson Co., Robinson's, was a chain of department stores operating in the Southern California and Arizona area, previously with headquarters in Los Angeles, California.
The Wholesale District is one of seven designated cultural districts in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Located in the south-central quadrant of downtown Indianapolis' Mile Square, the district contains the greatest concentration of 19th-century commercial buildings in the city, including Indianapolis Union Station and the Majestic Building. Contemporary landmarks in the district include Circle Centre Mall and the Indianapolis Artsgarden.
Skid Row is a neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles. The area is officially known as Central City East.
Los Angeles Street, originally known as Calle de los Negros or Alley of the Black People, is a major thoroughfare in Downtown Los Angeles, California, dating back to the origins of the city as the Pueblo de Los Ángeles.
The Flower District of Downtown Los Angeles is a six block floral marketplace, consisting of nearly 200 wholesale flower dealers, located within the LA Fashion District. What started almost 100 years ago as a small flower mart near Santa Monica, California, has grown into the United States' largest wholesale flower district in its current downtown location. The Market is open very early in the morning, Monday - Saturday, and closes in the early afternoon. Every commercially available cut flower can be purchased there.
Pacific Boulevard is a street and principal commercial thoroughfare in the city of Huntington Park, California and the Los Angeles County neighborhood of Walnut Park. It runs from Vernon and Santa Fe Avenues in Vernon to Cudahy Street in Walnut Park before changing to Long Beach Boulevard. The Pacific Boulevard commercial district is the third highest grossing commercial district in the County of Los Angeles. The Christmas Lane Parade, seen in millions of homes via television throughout the United States and parts of Europe, has run down Pacific Boulevard since 1946. As many as 300,000 people attend the annual Carnaval Primavera held on Pacific Boulevard each year. Pacific Boulevard is well known to Latino residents of the L.A. area, and a magnet for commerce, culture, and night life.
Izek Shomof is an Israeli-born, American real estate developer, investor, one-time film producer and former restaurateur. Born in Tel Aviv, he dropped out of high school to open restaurants and an autoshop. Since the 1990s, he has restored many historic buildings in Downtown Los Angeles. He has been honored for his philanthropic work in reducing homelessness in Los Angeles.
The Golden Gopher is a restored 1905 dive bar in Downtown Los Angeles at 417 W. 8th Street. It was originally dubbed The Golden Sun Saloon, reopening as the Golden Gopher in 2004. Due to its age, its original 1905 liquor license exempts it from abiding by certain present-day ordinances, such as prohibiting the sale or location of alcohol within a certain distance of the establishment's front door, or the prohibition of liquor-to-go. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was a rumored early owner of the bar. It is currently managed by L.A. entrepreneur Cedd Moses under his 213 Hospitality group which, as of 2018, oversees 17 other Los Angeles watering holes and eateries that are either in their original state or are located in historic buildings whose original uses differed from that of a food or drink business.
The Los Angeles Downtown Industrial District (LADID) is manufacturing and wholesale district of downtown Los Angeles, California, that was established as a property-based business improvement district (BID) in 1998 by the Central City East Association (CCEA). The district spans 46 blocks, covers 600 properties, and is the historic home of seafood, produce, flowers, and a variety of products daily shipped in and out of Los Angeles by air, rail, and sea. The LADID hosts the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, the second largest produce market in the United States.
Retail in Southern California dates back to its first dry goods store that Jonathan Temple opened in 1827 on Calle Principal, when Los Angeles was still a Mexican village. After the American conquest, as the pueblo grew into a small town surpassing 4,000 population in 1860, dry goods stores continued to open, including the forerunners of what would be local chains. Larger retailers moved progressively further south to the 1880s-1890s Central Business District, which was later razed to become the Civic Center. Starting in the mid-1890s, major stores moved ever southward, first onto Broadway around 3rd, then starting in 1905 to Broadway between 4th and 9th, then starting in 1915 westward onto West Seventh Street up to Figueroa. For half a century Broadway and Seventh streets together formed one of America's largest and busiest downtown shopping districts.
The Potomac Block was a commercial building with a historical role in the retail history of Los Angeles, at 213–223 S. Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles, on the west side of Broadway between 2nd and 3rd streets. It was developed by lumberyard and mill owner J. M. Griffith, designed in 1888 by Block, Curlett and Eisen in Romanesque architectural style and opened on July 17, 1890. Tenants included Ville de Paris, and City of London Dry Goods Co. It was the first time major retail stores opened on South Broadway, in what would be a shift of the shopping district from 1890-1905, from the 1880s-1890s central business district around Spring, Main, First and Temple streets to S. Broadway, and ever further south along Broadway.
Row DTLA is a commercial district located in Downtown Los Angeles, which is situated at the intersection of Fashion District, Skid Row, and the Arts District. It spans over 30 acres and was repurposed from the historic Alameda Square complex. The mixed-use development comprises 100 retail stores, restaurants, and 1.3 million square feet of commercial workspace.
Coordinates: 34°02′47″N118°14′40″W / 34.04625°N 118.244565°W
