Downtown Los Angeles Named "America's Most Successfully Re-Invented Metropolis" By Dwell Magazine

LOS ANGELES, June 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Dwell Media, whose Dwell Magazine is a major arbiter of the re-making of the nation's central cities, awarded Los Angeles the title of "America's Most Successfully Re-Invented Metropolis" at a press conference a block from the Staples Center heart of the civic renaissance.  The announcement transpired in the gleaming courtyard of Met Lofts, a luxury apartment community which Dwell is honoring as the example of the kind of luxury rental residence "needed to sustain great and inclusive central city lifestyle."

Dwell Media president Michela O'Connor Abrams named Carol Schatz, president and CEO of the Central City Association, recipient of the Mother Of Re-Invention award for her and her group's "leading role in the area's re-creation, Carol Schatz breathed life into urban re-planning and helped guide Los Angeles into being a model for other cities," O'Connor Abrams said. 

The first of the Re-Inventor Awards, a planned annual acknowledgment, went to Faye Washington, president and CEO of YWCA Greater Los Angeles, whose new state-of-the-art seven-story downtown urban campus, serving over 1200 disadvantaged youngsters also is a monument of the city's rebirth only a few blocks from the bustling Staples Center/L.A. LIVE/Convention Center activity sector.  "Ms. Washington has authored and led a salvation of central city children, taking them off these downtown streets and putting them on the street to successful and contributive lives," O'Connor Abrams stated. "She and her staff and corporate supporters inspire the crucial element of compassion into the re-invention of downtown Los Angeles."

Robert Klein, president of Klein Financial Corporation, a real estate investment banking consulting company, was honored because "his high-end complexes provide the mandatory element of inclusion with their affordable housing component," the award acknowledges, "We congratulate Klein-Financial's effort to make our re-emerging city inclusive."  Klein Financial Corporation now redevelops luxury apartment communities like Met Lofts, 1600 VINE in Hollywood and Wilshire Vermont in Koreatown, showing how the new energy of a revitalized Downtown LA is being reflected into the nearby communities."  Klein, who also authored and has headed California's support of stem-cell research, was absent because he is directing a symposium on worldwide stem cell research in Vancouver. 

Also honored with the Re-Inventor Award was the Los Angeles City Council, selected for "concerted encouragement and implementation of policies of high-end growth which set an example for civic legislative bodies across America."  O'Connor Abrams saluted the legislative body because "it tried to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, which is not case in many other great cities trying to redeem their greatness."

SOURCE Dwell Media