Eastside Awaits Subway With Hope, Concern

The subway is coming to the Eastside, but taco stand owner Armando Salazar isn’t thinking about the problems that have plagued the project in Hollywood.

“I’ll be waiting for the subway customers,” he said.

Other nearby shopkeepers are aware of the sinkhole that engulfed Hollywood Boulevard, but many echo the sentiments of photo shop owner Stephen Jerrom: “That won’t happen here.”

Yet most merchants and residents in the affected area have little idea what awaits them in the mammoth, $1-billion project.

The project poses significant challenges for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Tunneling will take place an average of 50 feet directly under about 240 businesses and homes--more than in any other phase of the subway work.

One private construction official likened the ground conditions--which include contaminated soil and an ancient riverbed--to the minefields of Bosnia.

County Supervisor Gloria Molina has raised questions about whether another Hollywood sinkhole could occur in Boyle Heights--an area she represents--and how some companies allied with her Latino political rival got recommended for the project.

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Primarily because of Molina’s concerns, the awarding of a lucrative contract to oversee the project has been put on hold pending a review by the MTA inspector general.

The Eastside extension, due to open in 2003, will link up with the existing Red Line at Union Station and would also provide a speedy ride to Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley.

The first 3.5-mile phase of the 6.8-mile project will run from Union Station to 1st and Lorena streets and is scheduled for completion in seven years. Funding has yet to be secured for a second segment extending to Atlantic and Whittier boulevards.

Crews will be out later this year to relocate utility lines and clear land for construction sites. Tunneling is scheduled to begin next spring.

Some residents are opposed to the project, but their voices, for the moment, are few.

Nadine Diaz, a member of La Union y Fuerza de la Communidad, a Boyle Heights community organization, contends that the MTA has not been forthcoming about the project’s ramifications for residents.

“What we need is an improved bus system,” she said.

MTA officials are looking at ways to ease residents’ anxieties about the coming project. “People are scared,” acknowledged Rae James, MTA executive officer for communications. “They don’t know what to expect.”

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The agency is considering building a tunneling simulator, where residents “can get in and feel what it’s like if they’re going to have tunneling under their home,” and offering public tours of the tunnels.

MTA officials say they will work more closely with contractors supervising the project than in the past.

Even before the digging begins, attention is focused on the MTA staff’s choice for the firms to oversee the project. Picking from the proposals of four groups, the staff recommended the team of O’Brien-Kreitzberg Inc.; DeLeuw, Cather & Co.; Hochtief, and the East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU).

Molina has questioned at public meetings whether the firms have enough experience supervising tunneling and has expressed concern that some of them and their workers were involved in the troubled Hollywood leg of the project.

MTA staff denied that politics played any role in their recommendation and said some of the firms, including the German tunnel company Hochtief, have been involved in projects throughout the world. O’Brien-Kreitzberg supervised construction of the Green Line trolley.

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A member of an evaluation panel used by the MTA to judge the bids, Gary Hartley of the county Public Works Department, said he was “clearly impressed” with the O’Brien-Kreitzberg proposal. “I was very satisfied with their tunneling experience,” he said.

Hartley rejected the notion that any political influence was exerted on behalf of the group.

Nevertheless, Molina has made it known that she wants to prevent a repeat of the problems encountered in Hollywood. There, the project has left behind bitter feelings, and claims and lawsuits alleging more than $1 billion in damage.

One of Molina’s political allies, Rep. Esteban Torres (D-La Puente), expressed similar concerns.

“It would not be in the community’s best interest if the subway contract is awarded to a bidder who does not have tunneling experience, or whose performance on other MTA contracts has been marred in recent years,” he said in a letter to the MTA.

DeLeuw, Cather & Co., one of the firms recommended to supervise the Eastside tunneling, has been involved with its parent company, the Parsons Corp., in the joint venture called Parsons-Dillingham, which has supervised the subway’s troubled Hollywood leg.

MTA officials were critical of Parsons-Dillingham’s oversight after portions of Hollywood Boulevard sank up to 10 inches in 1994. Parsons-Dillingham accused the tunnel contractor of concealing deficient work from inspectors. An independent review also concluded that Parsons-Dillingham fell short of “acceptable industry practice” in its supervision of the subway work downtown, where sections of tunnels were built with concrete thinner than designed.

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Parsons representative Jamie Brown said in a written statement: “To suggest that De Leuw, Cather, or any member of the Parsons-Dillingham joint venture, has performed anything but the highest quality, professional work for the MTA is both inaccurate and contrary to the results of the MTA’s formal evaluation process.”

MTA construction chief Stanley Phernambucq said in a statement: “Past performance is always considered in the evaluation process. However, unless the proposers have done something egregious, felonious or some act deserving of debarment, they are not disqualified. It is inappropriate to use guilt by association as a criteria.”

Molina, according to her aides, has also questioned what role TELACU and subcontractor Cordoba Corp.--both with ties to her longtime rival, City Councilman Richard Alatorre, and recommended by the MTA staff to work on the subway--would play on the project. She also has questioned their selection, citing their past problems with government contracts.

David Lizarraga, chief executive of TELACU, an Eastside community development corporation, and George Pla, head of Cordoba, did not respond to requests for comment.

Alatorre, also an MTA board member, defended the staff recommendation, saying he did not want to “second-guess” the professionals.

Referring to the subway project’s troubled past, Alatorre said, “I think that the MTA has learned from its mistakes.”

On the streets, merchants are looking forward to the coming of the Red Line.

“My little business [on Cesar Chavez Avenue] isn’t much, but I hope it’ll get better when the subway comes,” said taco stand owner Jaime Gutierrez. “But right now, I’m more worried about selling more tacos and burritos.”

The subway route takes a meandering journey after leaving Union Station, heading southeast to a stop at 3rd Street and Santa Fe Avenue. The station is called the Little Tokyo stop, but the immediate area is marked by old warehouses, including those occupied by local artists.

From there, the underground journey would head east across the Los Angeles River and the Santa Ana Freeway, through an industrial area and some homes before getting to Mariachi Plaza at 1st and Boyle Avenue.

The area is frequented by numerous mariachi groups looking for work, and MTA officials considered it a perfect spot for a subway stop.

The agency proposes to recast the area around 1st and Boyle as a tiled pedestrian strip, complete with a space that can be used for live performances. That, merchants say, would be a vast improvement over the graffiti-scarred stores and rutted side streets.

“This would make people realize that Mariachi Plaza is one of the cultural points of the Eastside,” said Jerrom, co-owner of Mariachi Plaza Studio.

Co-owner Armando Arorizo added: “It will reassure the people that this, as well as the rest of East L.A., is a good place to visit.”

Engineers must tunnel underneath more homes to reach what’s expected to be the most popular stop on the Eastside extension: the station near Soto Street and Cesar Chavez Avenue. There is a plethora of restaurants, banks, stores and markets in the vicinity.

From there, the route again meanders south to 1st and then east to Lorena. In setting that portion of the route, MTA engineers were careful to avoid tunneling underneath Evergreen Cemetery, thereby allaying fears that graves might be disturbed.

El Mercado de Los Angeles, a longtime fixture of restaurants and curio shops, is nearby.

Unlike traffic tie-ups that marked the construction in Hollywood, MTA officials have told Eastside merchants that the main thoroughfares along the subway route--Cesar Chavez, 1st, Soto and Lorena--will be largely unaffected by the tunneling.

“I hope they’re right because we people in East L.A. are deserving of this project,” said restaurant owner Jose Almada.

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Red Line Heads East

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has begun buying land for a subway extension to the Eastside, the next phase of the region’s biggest public works project. Tunneling will get under way next spring. The 6.8- mile- long project will be built in two segments, with the first 3 1/2 miles costing nearly $1 billion and scheduled to open in 2003. Funding has yet to be assured for the second segment, which would end at Whittier and Atlantic boulevards.

Source: Metropolitian Transportation Authority