Ideas for the Future of Chavez Ravine

It seems that the nine contributing authors to “Field of Dreams” (Opinion, April 20) have never been to Elysian Park, and therefore cannot understand what an enormous impact commercial development there would create.

Elysian Park is the city’s oldest and second-largest park. It is not neglected. Joggers, walkers, dog owners and cyclists use its extensive trail system daily. On the weekends families take advantage of every square inch of developed picnic area. Only recently, a new Little League field was dedicated; a regular-sized diamond will open this summer; and although there are no official soccer fields, there are at least two games being played at any given hour on the weekend. Elysian Park is already home to Southern California’s oldest arboretum, established in 1893. How many commuters know they are speeding through the park on a road built for Dodger Stadium, a road which took 20 acres from Elysian Park’s arboretum in return for increased noise and pollution?

Voters recently passed both city and county measures to tax themselves to create and improve parks. The city and county should grab this opportunity to purchase that vacant Dodger land to enhance and expand Elysian Park.

SALLIE W. NEUBAUER

President, Citizens Committee

to Save Elysian Park

* I am deeply angered at Michael Sorkin’s piece on redevelopment of Chavez Ravine. Restricting the parking areas? Hotel development overlooking the ballpark? Has he ever attended a game at the stadium? He’s obviously never had the pleasure of arriving early and finding ample space to relax with friends and throw a football around with his kid. He’s evidently also never arrived late and had no trouble finding a parking space.

I suppose he’s also never seen a game from the cheap seats high above home plate, with breathtaking day and nighttime views of the green hills and trees of Elysian Park just beyond the center field parking lots, either.

Mr. Sorkin, if you plan to get rich off these ideas, take your act to Frisco or Phoenix. Ruin their baseball cultures instead.

DAN J. CURTIS

Los Angeles

* Given the sorry results of public housing projects over the past 40-45 years, can Thomas S. Hines really believe that “creative public housing” in the form of “Elysian Park Heights” would not have resulted in the same fate? Time has proven the Citizens Against Socialist Housing visionaries, not the right-wing “anti-housing” brutes Hines tries to insinuate they were.

It was the socialist ideal of a public housing utopia that destroyed the lives and community that were there to begin with, a valuable lesson today’s “social engineers” seem not to have acknowledged. Had Elysian Park Heights been built, by now it would be a postwar-era monument to crime, decay and human suffering. I’d rather see a curious empty lot there than another grand scheme financed by ordinary working slobs.

DAVID GREGORY

Los Angeles