Readers React: Bridging over downtown’s homeless

An interesting concept: Try to make one developer create vibrant pedestrian life on a downtown L.A. street that has none, and where a collection of powerful local institutions have chosen not to. (“Downtown bridge that would let tenants bypass homeless approved,” May 16)

Along this downtown stretch of Temple Street, Caltrans, the L.A. Department of Water and Power, the Music Center, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, the county, the city and the federal government each have their own buildings.

Where was the need for a more appealing street scene when they were building their edifices? And where were these institutions when, on dozens or more occasions, the issue of homelessness was brought to the fore?

I don’t know this developer or anyone associated with him or this project. But I’ve driven through this area hundreds of times. The troubled waters over which this bridge will pass can’t be calmed by one developer; it will take an entire village to do that.

John O’Donnell

Los Angeles

The bridge over Temple Street connecting the two halves of a new residential development has nothing to do with safety. It has everything to do with the rich not having to look, smell or (God forbid) touch a poor or homeless person.

With this wonderful bridge, the rich who wear purple needn’t even step over Lazarus, whose sores are being attended to by local dogs.

Roger Walton

North Hills

The relatively innocuous bridge proposed by this developer is a far lesser offense than his “architecture.” His gross faux Italianate apartment buildings stick out like the most nauseating McMansions.

Because L.A. is one of Modernism’s proudest epicenters, I trust that the potential residents would also reject faux Tudor and let’s-pretend adobe.

Don Glessing

San Diego