Urban Pioneers in a Battle Usually Fought in Suburbs

There was a time when a gleaming, architecturally edgy new police headquarters in downtown Los Angeles might have been welcomed as a boost to a bleak urban landscape.

Thirty, 20, even 10 years ago the idea of a thriving city center was just that: a vision bandied about by planners that never seemed to happen.

And then things changed.

Now, as hundreds of apartments and condos have been built downtown and started to fill with residents, some of these new urban pioneers find themselves in the kind of battle usually fought in the suburbs.

They don’t want to live next to the new home of the Los Angeles Police Department. Instead, they want more open space and an entire block filled with a park -- the way the city originally planned it.

On the other side of the debate is city government, which has spent the better part of a decade trying to find somewhere to build a $340.9-million replacement for Parker Center that would be open 24-7, complete with a rooftop helipad.

The city has settled on a site conveniently across from the south side of City Hall and also bordered by the new Caltrans building, the Los Angeles Times building and a turn-of-the-century office mid-rise now filled with expensive lofts and some very peeved residents.

There also would be a six-story garage and motor pool nearby, next to the restored St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, irritating business owners at the north end of the developing Gallery Row arts district.

In March, the city released its final environmental report on the project. And though some downtown residents and businesses will continue to raise a fuss, in all likelihood the plan will be approved by the City Council this spring and construction will begin.

There remains disagreement over whether the project will have a broader impact on the Civic Center district downtown. Boosters see it as beneficial; critics think it’s a train wreck; and others wonder if it reveals something else entirely: the lack of a consistent, long-range vision for the center of L.A.

“This entire episode is symptomatic of the failure of good planning in Los Angeles,” said Ken Ehrlich, a park activist, artist and Cypress Park resident. “For seven years, there has been discussions at taxpayer expense to develop this land as a park, and at a drop of a hat it’s ignored.” Meanwhile, city officials aren’t sure what to do with the current, outdated and undersized police headquarters, just east of City Hall, or its motor pool. City Councilwoman Jan Perry, who represents the downtown area, recently urged officials to explore tearing down Parker Center and possibly replacing it with other unspecified city structures.

And on top of the Higgins Building -- a blockish 1911 edifice rehabbed with residential lofts across from the headquarters site -- two banners hang. One reads “Mayor Save This Park.” The other reads “Live Work Play,” but “Live” and “Play” have been crossed out in red.

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As early as the 1930s, with the construction of City Hall finished, Los Angeles planners had grand visions for a Civic Center much like the mall in Washington, D.C. City Hall would anchor an area that included courthouses, county buildings and a great lawn sweeping downhill toward Union Station.

What happened instead: The Hollywood Freeway carved the area in half and the Civic Center, courtesy of mid-20th-century architecture, filled with a slew of bland buildings.

And there things stood for decades, until 1997, when city and county leaders undertook a project to revamp the Civic Center and tie its disparate buildings together. The plan called for more green space and more uniformity in the design of tree grates, park benches and signs that were to be “colorful and festive.”

The plan dictated that two new parks be created. The first would be on the west side of City Hall on a site occupied by a parking lot for the criminal courts building.

The other would be on the block dominated by the old Caltrans building and bounded by 1st, Spring, 2nd and Main streets.

Ira Yellin, the late civic leader and downtown developer, had long pushed for the old Caltrans site to become a park and helped conceptualize what it might look like.

Concurrently, the city was searching for a new home for Parker Center, a 1950s-era structure that was overcrowded, lacked fire sprinklers, had asbestos in its ventilation system and, according to city engineers, might not survive a major earthquake.

Several downtown commercial properties were considered but abandoned for reasons including cost, feasibility, politics, too little parking and the unwillingness of elected officials to allow the LAPD to be located too far from the seat of city government.

Officials finally settled on a large plot the city owned at 1st and Alameda streets. The property, at least originally, would have housed the police headquarters, a city jail and a fire station as well as the city’s emergency operations center.

Enter the residents of Little Tokyo, an adjacent part of downtown that is well-kept and pedestrian-friendly.

Many residents and business owners were still unhappy that the original Parker Center had taken a bite out of their neighborhood, and didn’t want it to happen again.

They also objected that the new police facilities -- particularly the jail -- would be next to a Buddhist temple and a planned Gold Line light-rail station.

With opposition mounting, Perry announced that she too opposed the site and sought the council’s backing on June 23, 2004 -- a move that she publicized by listing it on the council’s regular meeting agenda.

A motion to exclude the site passed unanimously. But then Perry asked the council to consider an amendment, seconded by Councilman Bernard C. Parks, that was not on the agenda: to recommend putting the police headquarters on the site of the old Caltrans building. It too passed unanimously.

Residents who lived next to the new site were outraged. They said they had not been adequately warned that the council would vote on a new site.

The residents also were upset because city officials had adopted an ordinance in 2002 stating that the former Caltrans site was needed for “an open-space project.”

With the city’s chief legislative analyst, Gerry Miller, at her side in a recent interview, Perry acknowledged the ordinance but said “open space” was not the same as green space. She also said the new police station complex would have a one-acre park and would be set back from the street.

“When this is done it will absolutely be the safest block in the entire city, and there will be a park,” Perry said. “As for the motor pool [next to St. Vibiana’s], that’s probably not the most wonderful place to put it, but it’s a piece of land that we have some control of.”

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Much of the opposition to the new headquarters has come from residents of the Higgins Building.

Many thought they had paid dearly in the form of rent or mortgages to live next to a park and were surprised to learn instead that they could be looking out their windows at the LAPD.

“I moved in with the knowledge that it was going to be a park, and after I got here that changed” in a quiet and stealthy way, said Higgins resident Greg Morris, a film industry camera assistant who left Hollywood for downtown.

Architect Thom Mayne said one consideration when he designed the new Caltrans building was that it would sit across from a park.

“It seems like the city is growing up, and it’s time that it makes intelligent decisions on the basis of urban principles and civic goals that are synergistic,” he said. “Until that happens, we’re going to have a series of random events and the question is: Is that useful for the city? Of course I’m going to say it’s not.”

In the nearly two years since the headquarters decision was made, comments from downtown residents have led officials to reduce the footprint of the building. And the original plan to consolidate several LAPD facilities on a single site has been set aside.

Already the cost of the new police headquarters, because of delays, has risen $37.7 million -- to $340.9 million -- as construction prices have soared. The city also could face the prospect of expensive eminent-domain proceedings to acquire properties for the motor pool.

The hope for many in the area is that all the individual pieces ultimately will come together to produce something greater than the parts.

Marilyn Levin, an attorney who works for the California Department of Justice in the Ronald Reagan State Building, said that structure also was supposed to revive a stretch of Spring Street when it opened in the early 1990s. She doesn’t think it has.

“I’ve seen no sense of order in the way downtown has developed; there doesn’t seem to be a master plan that some leader is encouraging downtown developers to follow,” Levin said.

“There are beautiful buildings and wonderful lofts and restaurants, but no one in City Hall would ever look at a large piece of land like this one and say, ‘Let’s make it beautiful.’ ”