County Has Own Plans for Taylor Yard Land : Development: News of the Transportation Commission’s purchase of 67 acres surprises community leaders.

The virtually unnoticed purchase of 67 acres of a former rail yard has touched off a furor among community leaders who had envisioned the land as a springboard for economic revival in northeast Los Angeles.

The Northeast Los Angeles Community Plan Advisory Committee had hoped Taylor Yard, a desolate stretch of riverside land that was once a switching center for freight trains, could be transformed into a cluster of new businesses and affordable homes and a bustling park.

But in recent weeks, the 18-month-old committee has learned that this key development opportunity has been crushed by the even more ambitious plans of a county agency that is building a regional passenger rail system. In December, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission purchased more than a third of the available Taylor Yard land for a rail maintenance center but failed to inform the northeast advisory committee.

“Absolutely everyone was boggled and amazed” when they heard about the purchase during a committee meeting June 19, said Eric S. Ludwig, an Atwater Village resident who serves on the advisory panel. “It came as a total surprise to everyone sitting on the committee.”

Los Angeles city planners and City Council aides working with the panel also said they were left in the dark about the purchase of the prime piece of real estate just a few miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles in Glassell Park.

“Throughout the planning sessions, one of the major focuses was what we would recommend to go into Taylor Yard,” Ludwig said. “It was terribly disappointing to find that this area would be kept as a mechanical and industrial staging area--all the more so since the deal was consummated substantially before we anticipated any action was going to be taken on the property.”

The county Transportation Commission’s little-trumpeted purchase of a portion of Taylor Yard was part of its $450-million acquisition last year of 175 miles of rights of way and other land from Southern Pacific Transportation Co. The yard purchase represented $66 million of that amount.

Unaware of the purchase, the community advisory panel, which is reviewing the city’s land-use rules, sent more than 100 letters in May to public agencies, including the Transportation Commission, asking to be informed of any development plans involving large parcels in northeast Los Angeles. The commission did not respond.

In recent days, Taylor Yard has attracted a flurry of attention from several government agencies, each with a separate agenda.

The Los Angeles Police Department is considering construction of a police academy and driver training center on a portion of the yard that was not purchased by the commission.

The California Department of Health Services is reviewing Southern Pacific’s plan to remove toxic materials from Taylor Yard. As another example of an apparent lack of communication among government agencies concerned with Taylor Yard, that agency scheduled a public meeting on its toxic removal plan this week, on the same night and at the same time that the northeast plan committee meets.

“Part of the problem is with the process here,” said Thomas McHenry, an environmental attorney who serves on the committee. “The Taylor Yard is a small issue, but it’s symptomatic of a larger issue, which is that the right hand of the city doesn’t necessarily know what the left hand is doing.”

County Transportation Commission staff members insist that they told Los Angeles city planners about the Taylor Yard purchase. But they say the city’s transit planners may not have passed the word on to other planners who work with neighborhood advisory committees.

Two northeast-area City Council aides who monitor planning issues said they only recently found out about the sale.

Ann Marie Roos, who works for Councilman John Ferraro, said she heard about it last month. Diego Cardoso, who works for Councilman Richard Alatorre, said he had heard only sketchy details and was not aware the sale had been completed until last month.

He said a neighborhood planning advisory committee should be told when a county agency acquires a large parcel in its area of study. “In theory, it should be that way,” Cardoso said. In practice, however, it doesn’t always happen, he said.

Alatorre serves on the Transportation Commission but was not directly involved in negotiations with Southern Pacific. But at the commission’s meeting Oct. 24, Alatorre seconded and voted for a motion to buy Southern Pacific rights of way and other property, including Taylor Yard.

Roos and Cardoso said staying abreast of the status of Taylor Yard was not a high priority for them, because it is not in either of their districts.

Taylor Yard is in the 1st Council District, which was represented by Gloria Molina before she was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors earlier this year. She was still a councilwoman but was campaigning for the county post when the Taylor Yard sale was completed.

“When you work for a council office, you’re very aware of what’s happening in your district,” Roos said. “I really feel that someone in that office would have known about it.”

But Molina’s spokesman, Robert Alaniz, said the supervisor’s staff, including two top aides who served on her council staff, only learned of the sale Wednesday after a reporter inquired about it.

“We just heard today from the (Transportation Commission) that the purchase was made,” Alaniz said. “We are disappointed that the (commission) didn’t as a courtesy notify the council office that they were interested in the property at Taylor Yard.”

The 21-member northeast advisory committee, made up of business and neighborhood leaders, began meeting in January, 1990. The panel, appointed by City Council members, was instructed to help city planners with the Northeast Los Angeles Plan Revision Program.

The committee will review and recommend changes in the city laws that govern where housing, shopping centers and factories can be built in the communities of Eagle Rock, Glassell Park, Cypress Park, Atwater Village, Highland Park, Mt. Washington, Monterey Hills, El Sereno and Lincoln Heights.

Because the area is already densely developed, the panel has spent much time discussing the potential of two remaining large pieces of open land: the 45-acre former site of the Franciscan ceramics factory in Atwater Village and the 243-acre Taylor Yard.

Southern Pacific is retaining 74 acres for a locomotive repair yard, but it has put the remaining 102 acres of Taylor Yard land up for sale.

The county Transportation Commission was not required to conduct an environmental review that would include public hearings before its purchase of the Taylor Yard land because it did not plan to change the property’s use. “It was a rail yard, so we’re just rebuilding it as a rail yard,” said Richard Stanger, the commission’s director of rail development.

Stanger said the commission’s plans for the Taylor Yard land were addressed, however, as part of an environmental review of the proposed Pasadena light-rail line. But the last public hearing on that project was held in December, 1989--one month before the northeast advisory committee was formed.

“There are legal and environmental requirements, and we followed those, but we should also have informed the community,” said Nancy Michali, manager of the Pasadena light-rail project.

Michali said she mentioned the commission’s plans for a Taylor Yard maintenance center when she met last August with members of the northeast advisory panel. “They might not have understood the implications,” she said Wednesday.

Stanger said his staff did not inform City Council offices about the Taylor Yard acquisition because he believed the commission’s negotiations with Southern Pacific were widely known. The commission was flush with funding from two state transportation bond measures and sales-tax increases and was anxious to press ahead with regional transit projects.

When the Southern Pacific deal was struck, the purchase of 175 miles of railroad rights of way was given the greatest attention.

“Within the context of what the acquisition was, you emphasize the importance to the region of these routes,” Stanger said. “The end result was that Taylor Yard was perhaps downplayed. But that wasn’t intended at all.”

Still, some community leaders believe the sale was kept quiet to prevent an outcry from residents and business leaders who wanted to see something other than another rail center built at Taylor Yard.

The Transportation Commission has drawn criticism from Friends of the Los Angeles River, a group that wants to create a new park on the portion of Taylor Yard that borders the river. The commission’s construction plans, however, leave little room for recreation, a spokesman for the river group said, and the agency is reluctant to revise them.

Stanger was scheduled to appear at the northeast plan advisory panel’s meeting Wednesday night to discuss the commission’s Taylor Yard project and its failure to tell the community about the land purchase.

The committee’s chairman, John Hisserich, said he is concerned that his panel’s work is not being taken seriously by some government officials. “I think it’s been overlooked,” he said. “It’s striking to me the degree to which what we do is not viewed with any particular attention.”