A New Spin: ‘Rebuild LA’ From the Top

Does anyone even vaguely recall the “Rebuild LA” effort that was mounted after the Los Angeles riots a few years ago?

All along, I’ve thought Rebuild LA was a hoax, a false promise on the part of the powerful that disappeared after things calmed down. Now it appears they are back in business with a new and different approach: They are rebuilding L.A. from the top up.

That’s right, instead of the crude, passe ‘60s slogans like “from the bottom up”, those who run Los Angeles did it their own classy way.

First, the multibillion-dollar Getty Center has opened on 700 acres of a Brentwood mountaintop in order to be “closer to the population of the city,” according to John Walsh, the museum’s director. Indeed, posters several miles away in the heart of the high-unemployment Crenshaw district exhort the residents to “Imagine . . . your Getty Center.”

The Walt Disney Co. gave $25 million to the $250-million fund-raising drive to build the downtown Disney Music Center, in the very week that Disney’s CEO earned stock options worth $500 million.

If that weren’t renaissance enough, the new downtown sports arena was named after the Staples Corp. and began selling corporate boxes for $200,000 each.

The nice thing about top-up financial strategies is the broad base of taxpayer support via multiple loopholes. Under the retrograde liberal bottom-up concept, the broad base of taxpayer subsidies would be reduced to only a very few, like the Getty and Disney interests, the out-of-state oil barons behind the sports arena and the executives of Staples.

If it weren’t for that loose cannon Councilman Joel Wachs, the broader public would have had the opportunity to pay $100 million for the sports arena. But at least the $200,000 luxury boxes will be tax write-offs, and the Community Redevelopment Agency will throw in a few mil in public funds.

Now that the plan to rebuild Los Angeles from the top up is working so well, what about the rest of the city?

The dramatic contrast between the success of new “world-class” museums and arenas and the chronic failure of our more basic institutions is a troubling one. For example, Getty visitors enjoy a futuristic tram ride while the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is out of money for new rail lines to the congested San Fernando Valley, East Los Angeles and South-Central.

Another grating example is the continuing failure to supply sufficient qualified teachers and modern textbooks, not to mention art and multimedia classes, in the local public schools at a time that the Getty is spending tens of millions on an elite Old World-oriented art collection.

The point is that museums, music halls and sports stadiums may rebuild the egos of self-anointed civic leaders, and certainly may be valuable on their own merits, but do not constitute a strategy for making Los Angeles safer, more livable and more equitable. Going to Dodger Stadium is one of the most pleasant ways to spend an evening, but it has not “revitalized” downtown. Going to the old Getty in Malibu was an aesthetically pleasing experience, but moving it “closer to the population” won’t save us from the possible fire next time.

If there is good news in this tale of two cities, it is that the Getty’s president and CEO, Barry Munitz, seems willing to vocalize the contradictions. Munitz said: “There’s a void out there in arts and humanities education in a society that’s just so increasingly technical and decentralized and dehumanized. The Getty by its strengths and its financial resources should be one player in healing this wound.”

On another occasion, Munitz has denounced the widening gap between educational haves and have-nots as “a ticking time bomb inside the social fabric of this country.” The Getty as a populist palace? Is it possible that, having rebuilt L.A. from the top, the charitable rich will turn their attention to “healing this wound?”

The people in Crenshaw, for whom Rebuild LA was intended, certainly shouldn’t hold their breath. But everyone concerned about the racial and economic divides in Los Angeles should take an interest in turning the words of Barry Munitz into reality.