They Paved Paradise : Residents Must Not Allow Redevelopment to Obliterate Working Communities

I’m a native Angeleno and I’ve seen this city when it was a working city. Before World War II, Los Angeles was a small town with a sense of community. People were attracted by the good weather and lifestyle. So began the postwar growth and the insane and unplanned sprawling metropolis that we have today.

The building of the Hollywood Freeway contributed to the decay of the Echo Park and Pico-Union neighborhoods before community activists knew how to organize and fight back. With the destruction of housing stock in the Temple-Beaudry area and land-banking by developers in the area bounded by Temple, Beaudry, Glendale, Lucas and 7th and 8th streets, community activists said, “Hey, what’s going on here?”

That’s when community input and the Temple/Beaudry Property Owners, Friends of Echo Park Library, Inner City Alliance, Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park saved the day.

We did not want another commercial high-rise downtown for this area, which has become known as Central City West. We demanded a combination of commercial and residential development, including infrastructure, transportation, housing, green space and all the things that go into making a 24-hour viable community.

We demanded that the city and developers replace the units they razed, but they took the position that they did not know how many units were destroyed. So we said contact the Department of Water and Power and count the meters. Using that method they came up with between 1,200 and 1,700 units that they had to replace, and this became part of the Central City West specific plan.

A lawsuit brought the development plan to a halt and then came the recession, so development practically evaporated. Now that plans to build a high school on the Ambassador Hotel site have been dropped, the Board of Education wants to acquire 24 acres of expensive land at 1st Street and Beaudry Avenue for a high school that would displace housing units. Since the Central City West specific plan was enacted, housing units must be replaced. It’s the law.

Activists were concerned that Central City West would become another Bunker Hill or Chavez Ravine and that the needs of the community would not be addressed.

The public must be made aware that there is an important general plan or master plan that breaks down into community plans. For example, there is a Silver Lake/Echo Park Community Plan; people can have input into what goes into their plan by calling their City Council member and asking to serve on the Community Plan Advisory Committee.

The Community Redevelopment Agency is one of the biggest obstacles to planning a well-designed city and preserving our existing housing stock. The agency was initiated to redevelop “blighted” areas, not to destroy communities.

The agency must be regulated and its powers investigated so that it truly meets the needs of the city and its people. People must educate themselves regarding the agency. The agency’s use of eminent domain to destroy stable housing stock and neighborhoods for the interests of the developers must stop.

The upcoming “enterprise zones” and “project areas” are examples of the large-scale redevelopment that is not in the interests of communities. The agency wants to pass a law to acquire unprecedented powers of eminent domain. There has been a subtle but important change in the agency’s interpretation of eminent domain. One document noted, “Within the context of redevelopment, public purpose does not necessarily mean public use.”

Legislation for the recovery development plan could come before the City Council and mayor for consideration in the next 10 to 15 months. We want to preserve the existing stock as much as possible without destroying the neighborhood. Those old houses were gone before we knew what was happening, but we’ve learned through experience.

We have our vision of what L.A. should be, and it’s not the vision the developers or City Hall has.