Is Square’s Future Child’s Play?

What was once the city’s central park and is now Pershing Square, continues to be a central issue in the debate on how downtown Los Angeles can become more urbane and attract a broader community; a place where people want to go instead of have to go.

This has been a challenge to the privately operated, publicly funded Pershing Square Management Assn., struggling recently, along with the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, Recreation and Parks Department and just about everyone who in some way comes in contact with the fragile five-acre park, and cares.

It was this challenge that recently prompted the suggestion by Maureen Kindel, president of the city’s Board of Public Works, that the popular Los Angeles Children’s Museum, which has outgrown its present facilities in the Civic Center Mall, be relocated and expanded in the garage beneath the square.

Though the concept presents some tough financial, legal and planning problems, none is insurmountable. Indeed, the fact that such concepts have generated imaginative designs and worked well in other cities, prompted select public officials here to welcome Kindel’s suggestion.

Yet, when presented with the idea, the executive director of the management association, Janet Marie Smith, dwelt on the problems it raises. These include the limitations of the 12-foot ceiling heights in the garage, the 15 years remaining on the lease of the garage to a private firm, and that the square “may not be a place for kids.”

Except for the problem of security for the children--a problem in the Civic Center Mall as well as in almost all central public facilities--the issues raised are relatively minor. More challenging will be the design and funding of the museum.

Ironically, the objections came from a private organization established to revitalize the park and to overcome the tendency of public agencies, when confronted with a new idea, “to tell you why it can’t be done, rather than how it can be done.” The statement was made last year by Wayne Ratkovich, a developer who helped form the organization and now is president of its board.

In addition to painting some of the park’s facilities and furnishings an immodest green, encouraging vendors to venture into the area and making sure the trash baskets are emptied, the association has been pursuing a planning process involving, among other things, opinion surveys and workshops. It has been a healthy process for which Smith deserves credit.

The association’s most ambitious effort to date--in addition to getting a $1.6-million “loan” from the CRA--was to hold recently a heralded “Park Authors Workshop” as part of the process.

Five persons who have been involved in park projects across the country were brought to Los Angeles (at a cost of about $10,000) to discuss their experiences and raise some possibilities for Pershing Square, while, not incidentally, promoting themselves for possible consultant contracts. (About $256,000 has been set aside in the association’s budget for possible consultant services.). According to those who attended the all-day workshops, and from what I could discern from an evening summary session, there were some kernels of ideas concerning the planning and programming of central-city parks. But to someone familiar with the projects and the writings of a few of the “authors,” there was nothing new, except the realization that each city presents a unique set of circumstances that cannot be wrapped up neatly in a particular process or generalized in a smooth flow of planning cliches.

If anything, the well-meaning but obvious suggestions by the consultants indicated what a waste of time and money (it is budgeted for $150,000) a design competition would be for Pershing Square. So far the most exciting proposal--locating the museum in the park--has come from the city itself.

Most of those who spoke at the workshop did address problems presented by the garage, particularly that its ramps consume a large portion of the park and that they tend to isolate the park from the surrounding street life. All suggested that the ramps be modified, with one consultant adding that the garage be abandoned, simply filled with dirt so the park above could be properly landscaped.

There was no mention, at the time, of any problems the suggestions might cause with the garage lease, as was raised a few days later when the museum concept was proposed.

One got the impression that the objections to placing the museum in the park stemmed in part from the fact that the idea had come out of the city’s bureaucracy, and not out of the association, and that it just might jeopardize its well-funded planning process and sweet lease for the park’s management.

It is obvious that if the museum concept, or any other major physical plan for the park is pursued, the park will have to revert to the city. After all, it is the city that is the park’s lawful guardian and eventually will have to bear responsibility for anything that happens there.

The reversion might be bitter medicine for the well-intentioned association to swallow, but in time it is going to feel much better for it.

This does not mean the association should disband. It has played a vital role in raising a number of issues concerning the square. Indeed, the idea of the museum probably never would have been made if Smith had not spurred on the association to stir up public interest in the square.

Whatever plans move forward to revitalize the square, they will need the association’s advice, fund-raising abilities, good wishes and good will.