As high-rise offices lose their luster, can this part of downtown LA find a way forward?

As the pandemic shut down office life in Los Angeles' downtown financial district, Claude Cognian tried to keep his gastropub Public School 213 open. But the evacuation of white-collar workers made way for an influx of homeless people and drug users — and more than a few troublemakers striding in the front door.

"It was hard to keep hostesses at the door, because they got scared," said Cognian, chief executive of the restaurant's parent company, Grill Concepts Inc.

Three break-ins cost as much as $12,000 each time just to repair the windows, all while the bottom line was cratering in the absence of the office employees who used to gather for lunch and after-work drinks. With sales down 75% from pre-pandemic days, his company closed the downtown gastropub in August and is not planning to return.

"Our bet was that downtown was going to come back, and it hasn't," Cognian said.

For decades the Los Angeles financial district was the beating heart of downtown, the corporate muscle that gave the city of sprawl a soaring glass skyline. But the pandemic and the wave of remote work hollowed out its skyscrapers and helped shutter many restaurants and businesses that relied on crowds of workers. While the neighborhood shows signs of recovery, few expect it to return to being the bustling hive of suits and ties that it was.

To many insiders — the urban planners, real estate developers and business owners with interests in it — the area will recover only if its identity grows more textured than a zone of white-collar office space.

Desirable office addresses were already spreading beyond the financial district before the pandemic, as downtown experienced a renaissance in housing, art and entertainment on blocks previously shunned by investors and residents.

To the south, billions of dollars with hotels, housing and entertainment venues. Obsolete century-old commercial and industrial buildings to the east were renovated into desirable housing and fashionably unconventional offices. Billions more were spent north on Bunker Hill where the including and office skyscrapers have been joined by museums, apartments and a high-rise hotel.