Public to Comment on Port-to-Downtown Freight Rail Plan

Central Los Angeles residents will have an opportunity Thursday to comment on a 20-mile rail freight expressway from San Pedro Bay to Downtown during a public hearing on the project, which is expected to generate 9,000 construction-related jobs.

Planners of the Alameda Corridor believe the $1.3-billion project will help revive the economies of South-Central Los Angeles and industrial Southeast Los Angeles County cities, but some business owners along the route have expressed concerns of being displaced.

At least a quarter of the contracts for the corridor are expected to go to companies owned by minorities and women, officials said.

“The purpose here is to give opportunities to people who are not normally given those opportunities,” said Gilbert Hicks, executive director of the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, based in Huntington Park. “Our board will be very sensitive to this issue because the project goes through the heart of disadvantaged areas.”

The authority was formed through a joint agreement by the Long Beach and Los Angeles port authorities, the city and county of Los Angeles, and South Gate, Huntington Park, Vernon, Compton, Lynwood and Carson. The public hearing starts at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Jefferson High School, 1319 E. 41st Place.

The proposed rail corridor calls for trains to run along a 30-foot trench in the center of a widened Alameda Street. Cargo will be ferried from the ports to Downtown Los Angeles. Three existing rail lines will be consolidated on the corridor.

The project, scheduled to begin construction in early 1995, is being funded by federal, state, county and municipal sources, as well as the railroads.

Drexel Chapman, vice president of the Seeley Co., a local commercial real estate brokerage, predicted that the corridor will help transform abandoned industrial areas into strip malls and low-income housing.

“I see a change along that corridor as a retail opportunity for sales that would put people to work,” Chapman said.

Not all businesses along the corridor are convinced of its economic benefits, however.

One cabinet wholesaler whose warehouse abuts Alameda Street at 51st Street said that companies bordering the corridor could be forced to relinquish land.