Plan to Revitalize L.A. River Unveiled : City Hall: The mayor expresses high hopes but offers few details on the future of the 50-mile waterway.

Mayor Tom Bradley on Thursday confirmed an aging city rumor: There really is a Los Angeles River.

Many Angelenos weren’t sure, since it’s been disguised as a concrete trough for decades.

So in a first step toward making good on his inaugural promise to turn the concrete- and garbage-lined channel into “an oasis of beauty and opportunity,” Bradley proposed a three-point plan to revitalize the 50-mile waterway that snakes its way through the heart of the city from the San Fernando Valley to San Pedro Bay. Bradley expressed high hopes for the plan but offered few details.

“The Los Angeles River is potentially one of California’s greatest land assets,” declared Bradley on the banks of the river as it flowed through the Los Feliz district.

Indeed, the river was one of the state’s great resources, helping define the city and its development from the mission days. But since the 1930s--when the Army Corps of Engineers lined most of the waterway with concrete in an attempt to control floods and speed along the flow of sewage to the sea--the river has been neglected.

Now political and civic leaders are rediscovering the river’s potential.

Bradley’s plan, which will strive to develop the recreational and environmental potential of the river, may have stiff competition.

Assemblyman Richard Katz has proposed making the channel a dry-weather alternate route for commuters. In October, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission allocated $100,000 to study the feasibility of Katz’s plan, which would create express lanes for buses, car pools and trucks along the river bed from the Valley through downtown to Long Beach--potentially cutting traffic on the Ventura and Long Beach freeways by 20%.

Another recent proposal came from residents of Bell and Cudahy who, concerned over the lack of available land, have proposed building a school over the river.

As creative as they may be, these ideas are dismissed as “cockeyed” by local environmentalists who joined Bradley on Thursday.

Lewis MacAdams, co-founder of Friends of the Los Angeles River, said his goal is to restore the river to a more natural state.

Others who joined Bradley Thursday envision a cafe- and hotel-lined walkway along the river, similar to the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Tex., that has developed into the second-biggest tourist draw in that state with an estimated 9 million visitors annually. Richard Hurd, river operations supervisor in San Antonio, said tourism is now the city’s second-largest industry, bringing an estimated $1.2 billion a year to the city’s economy.

But even Bradley’s vision of picnickers frolicking on lush, green banks beside cool blue waters may be a long time coming.

Calling his announcement a “first step,” the mayor proposed creating a Los Angeles River Citizens Advisory Committee, a Los Angeles River Task Force and he voiced support for a conference already planned by the Southern California Institute of Architecture that will focus on the Los Angeles River.

The task force, to be made up of city bureaucrats, would design three pilot projects--one each in the San Fernando Valley, Griffith Park and Central City areas--to flush out possible uses for the river way.

Bradley offered no specific plans on how to revitalize the river. He said the advisory committee and task force will have to reach those conclusions.

It will take “a great deal of effort, a great deal of money and a great deal of time,” he said.

The mayor’s staff acknowledged that there has been no money appropriated to support any of the planned endeavors.

And the city has little or no jurisdiction over the river, which is largely controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers and Los Angeles County.