angelenic: downtown los angeles

Controversy continues to plague the school formerly known as Belmont High.

This Saturday, an opening ceremony for tree planting activities at the mostly-completed Vista Hermosa Park was interrupted by the arrival of activists who claim the local community was excluded from the decision making process behind the development of the 14-acre recreation center.

Comprised mostly of women and children, the small group accused the Los Angeles Unified School District and the City of Los Angeles of manipulating facts to build on the toxic site, and then giving the land away to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy (SMMC).

“You sold us out!” cried one protester. “You threw people off this land and now you’re giving it away to the Santa Monica Conservancy. You talk about low-income housing, and then you threw out low income people!”

Councilman Ed Reyes on the matter after the jump…

angelenic.com is the neighborhood resource for Downtown Los Angeles and environs.

Check out our RSS feed or sign up for email alerts to be delivered to your inbox when we post!

According to Alexander Lew on Wired, Los Angeles’ population will grow by 2.4 million by 2030, resulting in a total of 7 million cars on the roads each day.

Lew observes in his article that only 7 percent of commuters use public transportation in L.A. County, far lower than in other major American cities—30 percent of San Francisco residents use transit, 25 percent within Chicago, and 54 percent in New York City. With the region’s growing population, the city won’t be able to support itself without future investments in transportation.

Among other things, Lew faults L.A.’s poor urban planning for our predicament:

Low-density sprawl makes it difficult to provide rapid transit service to every part of the city. In addition, because areas are so spread out, riders are sometimes required to drive to a kiss-and-ride lot to take the train; many, however, once in the car, just decide to continue driving. Finally, there are only 446,000 jobs in downtown Los Angeles, meaning that the other 4.4 million employed in the county work in other areas outside this so called “central business area.”

[Read more →]

Hopefully, you’re already doing the green thing and taking the Metro on a regular basis. Even if that’s not the case, it’s still worth ditching the car this Thursday and heading over to Union Station for a live rush-hour poetry reading sponsored by the Poetry Society of America (PSA) and L.A. County Metro.

The free event is a special tribute to the 10th anniversary of Poetry in Motion program and features poets Elena Karina Byrne, Suzanne Lummis and Marisela Norte. During the event, the MTA will be giving out special commemorative bookmarks inscribed with poems by Octavio Paz and Emily Dickinson. (Because if you won’t stop for poetry, poetry will stop for you).

More details on special poetry tribute after the jump…

Earlier this week, LA City Controller Laura Chick released an audit faulting the City’s Bureau of Engineering (BOE) for soaring construction costs related to the Los Angeles Police Department’s new headquarters underway on the corner of 1st and Spring.

This publicly-funded project has become one of the most expensive and visible projects the City has undertaken in recent years. When first budgeted in June 2004, the 500,000 square foot, ten-story building was priced out at $303 million, with a projected completion date of March 2009.

Project costs have now soared to $437 million, while the finish date for the main structure has been bumped back to May 2009. The audit also points out there is a 2008 budget request for an additional $16 million in General Fund dollars— not included in the $437 million budget— to purchase furniture, appliances and other equipment for the center.

[Read more →]