Attention Should Be Paid to LA’s Fashion District: Anthony Rodriguez Offers a Reality Check

Anthony, to start, update our readers on the City of LA’s Fashion District BID—its mission, the scope of its work, and how it supports and represents such a diverse and dynamic part of Downtown.

Our mission remains the same as it has for the last 30 years: to serve the community first. Nearly 80 percent of our overall assessment goes directly to field operations—our public safety program and our street-cleaning program—which form the backbone of how we keep this district clean, safe, and welcoming for everyone who lives, works, and visits here.

Our street-cleaning program is one of the most robust in the country, averaging about 14,000 pounds of trash collected each day—much of it illegal dumping. Each year, we remove more than 20,000 graffiti tags, pick up roughly 225,000 bags of trash, and pressure wash 19 million square feet of sidewalk across the district.

While clean and safe will always be our core, our work extends far beyond that. We actively promote the Fashion District as a destination—supporting our thousands of small businesses through marketing, storytelling, community events, business spotlights, and strategic partnerships. Whether it’s helping merchants recover after major disruptions, showcasing the district’s unique mix of fashion, flowers, food, and culture, or elevating our neighborhood’s brand citywide, our goal is to drive foot traffic, keep our businesses thriving, and uplift this vibrant, diverse community.

TPR interviewed your predecessor, Kent Smith, in 2003 and 2016, when he described LA’s Fashion District as the creative center for fashion in Southern California—and nationally. Is it still a fashion center?

Absolutely. Obviously, the world has changed since Kent Smith was with the organization, and we’ve had to pivot to keep our businesses afloat to survive global pandemics and other major national events. 

But absolutely—it’s still a creative center. The intersection at Ninth and Los Angeles is a perfect example. There are major design firms within those four buildings that design for many of the commercial brands you find in stores today.

How has the pandemic impacted your BID’s members? In what ways has it accelerated or fundamentally changed who the Fashion District serves, what it sells, and how it operates?

In so many ways that we still don’t fully understand. 

We’re working closely with Beacon Economics, looking at what’s already visible, and the economic impact on local businesses was huge. 

Historically, businesses in the Fashion District have been small, family-owned, immigrant-owned shops. They don’t run sophisticated P&Ls. They don’t have emergency funds. They operate day to day, sale to sale. So, to be shut down for as long as they were, the impact was instrumental.

It also accelerated the shift in buying patterns. Online sales were already a challenge we were trying to come up against. The lockdowns pushed that trend faster. Businesses still haven’t fully recovered, and pedestrian flow hasn’t either. 

During the pandemic, many grants and support mechanisms were available for small businesses. That hasn’t been the case for what we’re living through now. Some merchants developed a dependency on those support and relief programs. Now, without them, people are startled, slower to pivot, and we’re working to help educate them.

Elaborate on how the BID has worked with its ground-floor retailers, both during and after the pandemic, and speak to the impacts that recent ICE raids have had on their recovery.

During the pandemic, we were encouraging folks to pivot toward online sales—building a digital presence—and toward the assistance programs that existed at the time. 

Now, with the federal law enforcement activity, we were the first area in Downtown impacted. There’s no backbone, no support, and no one is coming to help. We’re on our own.

At our recent annual meeting, we presented the visitation data. You can see the dramatic dip starting the weekend of the activity, and that trend continued for several weeks. We’re back to where we were pre–federal activity, but when you compare that to pandemic trends, we’re still recovering from those times, too. 

So, we’re trying to pivot folks towards staying creative, staying community-oriented, and working together to climb out of the hole we’re in. The fear out there is real. Merchants created chat groups to alert each other about law enforcement presence. I understand, they want to go home safely to their families. But these networks have grown uncontrollably. 

People are mocking others, posting false alarms, or misidentifying what they see…Fish & Wildlife or DOT is getting confused with federal agents. Alerts go out, and people literally run from their stores. They shut down, and shoppers who were planning to come canceled their trips. All of that compounds the recovery effort we were already struggling through.

How has fear manifested in your District, particularly in Santee Alley, and how has this signature shopping corridor been affected since ICE and federal enforcement activity began?

Santee Alley has probably been one of the most impacted areas. It’s desolate. It’s not what it used to be. There used to be a waitlist for retail spaces, and this is the first time in many years that the alleys themselves have vacant storefronts. At one point, Santee Alley had the highest price per square foot for retail leases, and obviously, that’s not the case now.

More than ever, merchants are living sale to sale, day to day, trying to get by because people are fearful. One thing we’re trying to pivot them toward is creativity and diversity in the merchandise they sell. Santee Alley was known for bargains—especially back-to-school sales, toys, all kinds of things. That’s shifted, and our work now is to get them to stop relying on what worked in the past and open their eyes to what will be needed in the future if they want to survive.

Pivoting, are the BID’s members—garment manufacturers, building owners, and retailers—currently receiving any City or State recovery assistance?

No, not at all.  

Downtown LA, like many downtowns, has several BIDs. I have great working relationships with all my counterparts, and they know I’m always available to assist them. But each BID has its own unique challenges and needs a specific strategy.

What forms of assistance or support would make the most difference for the BID and its members?

A good example of our challenge came immediately after the last round of civil unrest in July, when residents, bars, and restaurants were angry about a city-imposed curfew in downtown. 

That Monday, I was trying to call the Governor’s office to get leverage over the Mayor’s office so we could get a curfew, because my retailers couldn’t survive another mass-looting event, days of protesting, fires, storefronts being burned down—what we went through in 2020. 

In 2020, on Los Angeles Street between Seventh and Olympic, almost every bolted trash can was on fire. Our teams had to run a fire brigade and modify pressure washers to put those out before they spread to structures. There was simply no way I could allow that to happen again, and I was the only one advocating for what the ground needed. 

Everyone else downtown wanted the opposite. 

I had to be selfish at that point and look out solely for our BID’s interests, and therefore, I was not being the “community player” I like to be, because the risk to our members was too high.

Amid these pressures, how well are City Hall and the other Downtown BIDs working with you?

I’m grateful to the Mayor’s Office for the attention they’ve given us—especially Deputy Mayor Vahid Khorsand. He’s been a godsend to us. We’re at a position now where we’re talking, and they’re listening. 

We’re a little bit late to the game, though. A lot more still needs to be done. We need unified messaging that’s specific to downtown…something like an “I Love LA” or “We Love LA” campaign, but focused on downtown. Speaking for DTLA’s BID community, we need someone to spearhead that. That’s beyond what’s within my reach or any of my counterparts’. 

This is where we need elected officials, tourism leaders, and others to come together and launch a real mass-media campaign—something that helps us move past the stigma and outdated perceptions people still have about downtown.

I’m not trying to cover the sky with my thumb here. We all saw what happened yesterday at Broadway Palace: a major shutdown, a SWAT call-out. Clearly, we have our challenges, but downtown has also been neglected for a long time, with only minor issues addressed, while larger problems have compounded.

Like everything else in life, people will keep pushing the envelope. When we fail to address illegal dumping, street vending, and the sale of counterfeit goods, those same bad actors will keep pushing and wanting more. They’re here right now because they can live in a semi-luxurious apartment building for a steep discount, and bring the nefarious activities they’re involved in from wherever they came, likely outside of Downtown.

Given the Downtown Community Plan’s rollout, the Convention Center moving forward, and CCA’s Revive DTLA initiative, are these efforts actually responsive to the Fashion District’s needs, or do they miss what’s happening on the ground?

The truth is, we’re far behind. I thought we’d be in a different place by now. On November 13, 2025, I expected us to be much further along in preparing for these major events. From what I see, and from what I’m responsible for, that’s not the case.

We need to combat things like the Citizen app. People praise it for keeping them informed, but I can’t tell you how many times a property owner has called me about a supposed “stabbing” on their block. We’re like, “No, we have no record of that.” I speak to LAPD multiple times every day, and I’ve met with the Citizen folks. It’s not really their fault; they’re pulling raw 911 data and repeating it forward with no validation, but we need to educate people because these false alerts drive fear and hurt foot traffic.

We also need people to understand that homelessness is somewhat down in Downtown. It feels like there’s more because encampments are larger and more concentrated, but the numbers are actually lower. Even with that, we have so many hidden gems in Downtown that should be lifted collectively by our elected officials—and that’s just not happening. More absolutely needs to be done, especially with the Games and all the major events coming.

As for the Convention Center expansion, we never put anything down officially, but we support it. I don’t want to misspeak on whether it’s a true expansion or more of a renovation, but either way, it’s going to benefit not only Downtown but the city overall.  As the second-largest city in the country, we need to be competitive. We’re losing conventions to San Diego? Come on, that can’t be the case. I would’ve thought this was a no-brainer that should’ve been resolved years ago. 

We’re grateful it’s happening and expect to benefit from it once they land larger-scale conventions and those true ‘citywide events' tourism talks about. So yes, we’re absolutely behind it, because we see the potential it offers us in the future.

Not to be provocative, but do you feel the Fashion District and its small-business base are receiving the attention from City Hall that the realities you’ve described truly merit?

The last several elected officials responsible for our area haven’t initially been allies to us, but we’ve been able to turn those relationships around to a point where we can have conversations and offer information so they’re better educated when making decisions that impact businesses.

Let me reframe the question: What would your members want that relationship with the Council Office to be?

An open relationship where we’re given the same level of attention and support that other community groups receive, allowing us to continue pushing forward with initiatives that align with their goals.

I’ll speak freely to DTLA 2040 because I’m on record at City Council. 

No other neighborhood in Los Angeles, under any other plan, was treated the way the Fashion District was. The restrictions imposed on our area, specifically in the IX2 and IX3 zones, aren’t seen anywhere else. These limitations, and what feels like a deliberate effort to turn developers away, are dumbfounding. 

We provided valuable data from Beacon Economics, MiG, and directly from developers, concluding that there’s very little interest in development because projects don’t pencil. 

With DTLA 2040’s new restrictions, it absolutely certifies there will be no market interest in future development. When we need housing and have the space to do so, why are we mandating 0.5 FAR dedicated to garment ground-floor space, or requiring 0.5 FAR for garment manufacturing? 

You really don’t need to be a sophisticated planner to see this won’t work. 

As much as we support the garment industry and want to bring back what we can, the cut-and-sew industry is not in Los Angeles anymore. It’s not because of greedy landlords or anything within our local control. The industry has moved offshore for reasons unrelated to LA. Now, LA is making it even more difficult for us to bring elements of it back.

Our contribution to the fashion industry will be in design and creative thinking. Mass production is highly unlikely to return, and we just don’t have the workforce or the physical infrastructure for it anymore.

Elaborate on the challenges and opportunities facing LA’s Fashion District as it works toward recovery.

Look at the IX2 and IX3 zones: they are light industrial areas. Even if there were interest from manufacturers, the average space is 3,000 square feet. How do we compete with the City of Industry or Riverside County with 20,000-square-foot spaces? Even if we had tenants, we don’t have the electrical capacity for modern machinery or loading docks. You can’t fit a 50-foot trailer comfortably down any of those streets.

The IX2 and IX3 zones now have the highest vacancy rates in Downtown. When I presented to City Council, the average time on market was over 500 days, rents were around $1.70 per square foot, and zero interest. 

Why not give us the flexibility to turn these spaces into creative spaces, or actually support adaptive reuse? Let us pivot to whatever industry is in demand so we can transform vacant spaces into job-producing spaces. 

In the long term, we want as many people as possible working within our area. Suppose that means changing our name from the Fashion District to something else—that’s fine. For 30 years, we have been committed to providing jobs and keeping spaces occupied so we can continue to be the economic driver we’ve historically been.

Editor’s Note: On April 3, 2023, Rodriguez urged the City’s Planning and Land Use (PLUM) Committee (CF 22-0617) to craft a “healthy policy for the Fashion District community” by increasing base Floor Area Ratio (FAR) in key hybrid-industrial and commercial zones, allowing creative office to count as productive space, and removing CUP barriers to adaptive reuse in IX2/IX3. Citing vacancy rates above 18–22% in legacy manufacturing buildings, Rodriguez warned that low IX2/IX3 mandates hinder the Fashion District’s ability to adapt, reuse space, and remain a job-producing economic hub while preserving its historic identity.

To close: Amid all the challenges you’ve outlined, what gives you optimism about the Fashion District’s resilience?

That’s easy. Look at who we are and where we came from. We’re proud that our district is made up of small, family-owned properties and businesses. Our district is built by people who came here with nothing, bought their business, and then bought their building. That’s still who we are. 

Our community has no interest in selling to large groups or becoming a skyline of dramatic high-rise buildings. They want to keep the identity intact while still moving forward and setting us up for the next 30 or 40 years.

We have every opportunity in the world. We’re the last corner of Downtown LA that hasn’t been fully developed and still has space to do everything—fashion, flowers, restaurants. We have room for it all, but we just need a real support mechanism from the City to get us over this hump so we can surpass the Social District, the Downtown Center, the Arts District…whoever. We can be just as shiny as Hollywood if given the opportunity. 

If any neighborhood or downtown in this country is going to come out ahead, it’s going to be the Fashion District because of the people here. We’re intelligent, resilient, and as a community, willing to push through; our vendors, families, and neighbors have done it before, and I’m certain they can do it again.