Landlords’ Pullback Puts L.A. Toy District at Risk

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This being the yuletide season, I made my way to the downtown Los Angeles Toy District the other day, because nothing says “Christmas” to me so much as stepping over piles of garbage to cross the street and shouldering my way past overflowing dumpsters in busy alleys.

The Toy District is in a bad way. Established by immigrant entrepreneurs in the 1980s as the center of a thriving wholesale import-export trade in toys and other gewgaws mostly from Hong Kong and China, it has been losing its verve for several years.

Today the district still has a melting-pot atmosphere and a generic inventory. Although many of the storefronts announce they’re “wholesale only,” during the holiday season the streets and alleys teem with retail bargain-hunters and with churro and sausage stands.

Yet rents have collapsed, from a high of $5 a square foot or more during the Toy District’s heyday in the late 1990s to $2 or less now. Many of the merchants I met while ambling through the district — which covers 15 blocks roughly bound by Los Angeles, San Pedro, 3rd and 5th streets — say they’re hoping for further rent breaks from their landlords.

• Read the full Los Angeles Times story.

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