Riordan Seeks to Soften Harbor Area Secession Sentiment

Trying to end decades of tension between harbor officials and port communities, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan on Thursday unveiled plans to advance redevelopment projects in the port while giving neighboring citizens more say in planning.

Riordan’s peace offering to San Pedro and Wilmington comes at a time when both communities are considering seceding from Los Angeles, largely because of their strained relationship with the city’s Harbor Department.

Leaders in both communities have complained that they have little, if any, input in the port’s planning process although their neighborhoods are heavily affected by the harbor’s commercial and tourist-related projects. The roots of the conflict date to the 1920s.

Among other things, Harbor area citizens want to participate in planning for the use of the vacant port land off 22nd Street, a new cruise ship terminal and the remaking of Ports O’ Call Village, a Harbor-side cluster of shops that has lost at least half its tenants.

“Secession is a dirty word,” Riordan said. “Stopping it will be a challenge. We must show people in San Pedro that we are willing to work with them.”

The mayor’s overture was delivered during a breakfast speech to civic leaders, local politicians and port officials in San Pedro. Most of the talk recapped what he thought were the successes and challenges of his administration. Then he touched on his latest initiative to patch up the port’s relationship with its neighbors.

“We will be your partner and resource,” said Riordan, who has about eight months left in his term. “We will make it happen in time.”

Over the past several months, Riordan’s office has been consulting on the three important port projects with John Jerde, a renowned architect who designed CityWalk at Universal Studios, and Keith Gurnee, a consultant who brought the city and community together for this year’s refurbishing of the Venice Boardwalk.

Jerde and Gurnee are assisting in the remaking of the 22nd Street parcel, the new cruise ship terminal and Ports O’ Call. The projects, which are important economically to San Pedro, have been delayed for years.

Riordan also has appointed John Wentworth, a San Pedro businessman, to the Harbor Commission. The mayor assigned him to resolve the long-standing differences between the port and the surrounding community.

The goal, Riordan said, is to directly involve citizens in port projects, an unprecedented move, given the port’s past insistence that it remain firmly in control of development on harbor land.

“We want to end the 100-year war between the port and the community,” Wentworth said. “This is an absolutely earnest effort. The community will have a voice in what is done.”

Wentworth said he wants to meet with members of neighboring communities on such port issues as light and glare problems from the port’s cargo terminals and on plans to build a 20-foot-high, mile-long wall to separate Wilmington from the port.

“This is a very positive indication,” said Noel Park, president of the San Pedro and Peninsula Homeowners Coalition, who attended the mayor’s address. “We will try to work together, but it’s going to be a long, hard road.”

Initiatives to plan Harbor area projects with citizen participation have been tried unsuccessfully in the past.

“There are lots of plans that have been shelved. The mayor’s will be another one,” said Andrew M. Mardesich, president of San Pedro Peninsula Homeowners United and a leader of the area’s secession drive.

Mardesich and other community activists, such as Gertrude Schwab of Wilmington, say they are skeptical of the mayor’s intentions. They pointed out that he seemed unfamiliar Thursday with the enormous wall the port wants to build to separate it from Wilmington.

“The mayor demonstrated to us that he is unaware of what is happening in San Pedro and Wilmington,” Mardesich said. “This program is only window dressing.”