Exposition Park Plan Exhibits a Lush Look : Renovation: Architects say concrete that surrounds area makes it unfriendly. A $350-million overhaul would rip out some parking lots and add greenbelts.

Seeking to improve the “schizophrenic” image of Los Angeles’ Exposition Park, architects hired by the state have proposed a sweeping $350-million renovation that would transform the fragmented, asphalt-laden area into a lush “outdoor living room” for the city.

In a draft master plan completed at the behest of the California Museum of Science and Industry, the architects conclude that the 160-acre park serves cars better than it does people. Surrounded by blacktop on two sides, the park--which houses the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the Sports Arena and three museums--appears “alien” and unwelcoming to adjacent neighborhoods, the plan says.

To remedy this, the Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, a Newport Beach architecture and design firm, has proposed encircling the park with a “green necklace” of tree-shaded promenades similar to those that ring New York City’s Central Park. The firm also suggests anchoring the park’s four corners with miniature parks that would give the community a place to gather.

Architects say these changes--two of several outlined in the 33-page master plan--would make Exposition Park function more like a park and less like a parking lot. If money can be raised to implement the plan--about 20% of the funding has been committed--proponents say it will dovetail with post-riot rebuilding, making Exposition Park into a grand gateway to South-Central Los Angeles.

“I don’t think we’re a symbol of rebuilding L.A.,” said Evan Nossoff, spokesman for the California Museum of Science and Industry, which is spearheading the park renovation effort. “I think we’re part and parcel of it.”

Among the other proposals:

* Building a community center and a neighborhood elementary school, called the Science Museum School, that would focus on innovative science education.

* Adding several well-marked and well-lighted pedestrian gateways that would inform visitors of the day’s events and direct them to the park’s attractions.

* Reducing vehicular traffic in the park.

* Replacing some parking lots with grassy lawns--more than doubling the open space available for recreation.

* Adding an underground parking garage, possibly to be built beneath the California Museum of Science and Industry.

Jeffrey N. Rudolph, the museum’s executive director, said the proposed park renovations are intended to work in concert with a planned redesign of the facility. Since 1990, when state officials found that two museum buildings do not meet earthquake safety standards, Rudolph and his colleagues have been planning to renovate or rebuild the facility.

Their goal, he said, is to make the park and its attractions--which also include the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum and the California Afro-American Museum--more accessible to visitors.

“The park as a whole represents a wonderful destination. But we could use it better,” Rudolph said. “We think that the improved park and museum will benefit each other.”

People who live near the park express guarded optimism about the proposed improvements. For years, they have lamented the park’s fenced-in, fortress-like appearance. But their desires for a more inviting community park were given short shrift, they say, as park administrators--led by the major landowner, the science and industry museum--sought to lure far-flung visitors.

“A lot of the community has felt like the park was hostile to the people who live around it. It’s like you’re welcome and yet you’re not welcome,” said Barry Reeves, 57, who has lived a block east of the park for 30 years. In the past, he said, when changes were proposed “no one in the community was even consulted. It was just done.”

But this time, the process has been different: Reeves and his wife, Grace, are among several residents who participated in formulating the master plan. Although they remain wary of certain proposals that they fear could crowd or commercialize the park, they say they are encouraged to be included in the discussions.

“It seems like the people that are in charge have been made to be aware that there are people in the community who are concerned and have an interest,” Reeves said. “At least now they’re asking for community input and suggestions and how we feel.”

Rudolph confirms that during the planning process, the California Museum of Science and Industry made an effort to reach out to residents. It hired a consultant to act as a community liaison, seeking people who were interested in playing a part.

Rudolph said it is a matter of strategy. Without community support, he doubts that a project of this magnitude would get done. And residents have made it clear that they want more than lip service.

At the March meeting of the museum’s board of directors, about a dozen community members addressed the board.

“They expressed their thanks for participation in the planning process and their concern that the board show that that’s real--that we weren’t just asking them for ideas but that we were going to follow through and do it,” Rudolph said.

One way that museum officials hope to follow outreach with action is by supporting a new for-profit corporation that would be owned exclusively by people who live within a 2.5-mile radius of the park. Recently incorporated, the Exposition Park Community Development Corp. will seek to create business ventures in the park that would benefit the community--not just by offering job opportunities, but by selling stock.

About 85,000 households will be eligible to buy shares of stock in the corporation, which plans to operate five divisions that could provide maintenance, security, recycling, leasing and events management services in the park. The shares will be priced to make them affordable to residents, said J. Eugene Grigsby, a UCLA professor of urban planning and one of the Community Development Corp.’s founding members.

Museum officials--determined to make good on their word--have agreed that when a new contract for park maintenance is negotiated next year, they will give top consideration to the community-backed corporation, said Robert L. Campbell, the California Museum of Science and Industry’s deputy director of administration and operations.

“We worked real hard to obtain their confidence,” he said. “They will be at the table.”

Grigsby said the corporation will also be seeking contracts with Spectacor, the Philadelphia-based concert promotion firm that manages the L.A. Coliseum and the Sports Arena. “The specific goal is to have residents of the area be direct beneficiaries of the reinvestment,” Grigsby said. “No promises, no dreams, no notion of phantom jobs or short-term construction jobs. We envision this to be a long-term, long-haul venture that leads to the community benefiting for the first time.”

Before the draft master plan can be implemented, it must clear several hurdles.

An ad hoc committee of the California Museum Foundation--whose members include Los Angeles business leaders from U.S. Trust Co. of California, Rockwell International Corp. and the Times Mirror Co., among others--is reviewing the draft master plan to determine the potential for private-sector funding.

That group’s recommendations will be among many that the California Museum of Science and Industry’s board of directors considers when it decides whether to give final approval to the plan--probably early next year. In addition, an environmental impact study is to be completed by this fall.

But the plan’s biggest obstacle is lack of money. Only about one-fifth of the estimated $350 million price tag has been allocated--$30 million from the State Allocation Board for the Science Museum School; $41.3 million for repair or replacement of the earthquake-damaged structures that house the California Museum of Science and Industry.

Museum officials stress that all the elements of the plan need not be completed at once. Some projects are more pressing than others. Before the new museum buildings can be constructed, officials must find funding for the proposed underground parking garage.

To raise the money to implement the rest of the plan, museum officials are looking to several sources. If a majority of county voters approve a $540-million parks assessment bond issue on the November ballot, that would raise $24 million for Exposition Park improvements. The park was also included in a previous parks bond issue that failed in 1990, but it required support from two-thirds of voters.

There is more optimism about a private fund-raising effort. Despite the recession--and despite impending state budget cuts that threaten the museum’s operating budget--museum officials are hopeful that companies will look to the park, one of the largest open spaces in the city, as a high-profile place to make a civic contribution.

Already, a group of restaurateurs has offered to help. Led by Mauro Vincenti, owner of downtown’s Rex Il Ristorante, they have proposed holding an international food and art festival in Exposition Park to help pay for renovations. Scheduled for late September, the three-day festival would draw 60 top restaurants from around the world to prepare their specialties.

By charging a $6 admission fee and then $4 to $8 per serving, Vincenti hopes to raise $1 million. But equally important, he says, is that the festival would lure people from all over Los Angeles to spend their days and nights in Exposition Park.

“Los Angeles’ main defect is it’s a mechanical city. It has completely eliminated the concept of the piazza,” he said, lamenting the lack of open public squares common in his native Italy.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and the Checkers Hotel--which have agreed to donate airline tickets and lodging for the event--are among several businesses that are pitching in, Vincenti said. But as he looks for corporate sponsors to donate $250,000 in operating expenses for the event, he has discovered some reluctance. One company that had promised to donate $150,000 backed out last week, he said.

“They said: ‘If you move it to the Westside, no problem.’ There is the will to do this (downtown), but everybody is afraid to take a chance,” he said.

But Vincenti is determined. Downtown is where he makes his living. Los Angeles is his adopted city. He says he must do what he can.

“If I was a carpenter,” he said, “I’d put 60 carpenters together and build a house.”

Grigsby, the UCLA professor, predicts that if the fund-raising drive can gain a little momentum, more entrepreneurs will offer their support. This is an opportunity, he said, to be part of something big.

Coupled with the proposed renovations to the Los Angeles Coliseum, implementation of the master plan could lead to $500 million being invested in Exposition Park over the next two decades, Grigsby said.

“There’s nowhere else you can point to in South-Central Los Angeles in any one location that someone’s putting half a billion dollars in,” he said. “What is proposed for Exposition Park might be viewed in the sense as the crown jewel in the rebuild L.A. effort.”

In the draft master plan, it is phrased this way: Exposition Park is one of the “final frontiers” of urban Los Angeles--a fragile, divided place that is “not loved by everyone, and perhaps not even by anyone.”

“It is as if the park is ‘up for grabs,’ ” the plan reads. “We must know and value the park for what it is: for its layered history, for the intricacies of the interests in it, and most importantly for its physical fragility. We must agree on the importance of making the park whole and set about doing it.”

Plans for a Greener Park

A proposed $350 - million face lift for Los Angeles’ Exposition Park would transform the 160-acre plot, replacing asphalt with lawns and streamlining access routes in an attempt to make the park more inviting. The Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership outlines proposed renovations in a draft master plan commissioned by the California Museum of Science and Industry.

EXPOSITION PARK: TODAY

Shaded areas represent existing open space, concentrated in the park’s north and east sectors. The southern and western edges of the park are dominated by parking lots--a design flaw that architects say makes the park seem unwelcoming to adjacent neighborhoods.

EXPOSITION PARK: TOMORROW

Darkly shaded areas depict a “green necklace” of tree-shaded promenades that would encircle the perimeter, connecting four miniature parks--one on each corner--to serve the community. Lightly shaded areas represent lawns and other green space, which would be greatly increased.