Children’s Exhibits Sought in Valley and Downtown

In what backers said was a step to address the needs of young people, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a plan to build campuses of the Children’s Museum at Hansen Dam in Lake View Terrace and in the downtown Art Park near Little Tokyo.

Approval of the $1-a-year leases for the two sites came after an hour of often heated debate over a proposal, ultimately approved, to require construction to begin at Hansen Dam within five years.

Councilman Alex Padilla, whose district includes the Hansen Dam Recreation Area, said the condition was a necessary safeguard to guarantee that the underfunded San Fernando Valley project is not dropped.

The museum board has $9.5 million in city park bonds to build the downtown campus, but only $3.5 million in state and city funds for the about $10-million museum proposed at Hansen Dam.

Museum board President Doug Ring said he is confident that the remaining money can be raised, but Valley council members wanted an assurance in writing.

“We have heard part of the history of the San Fernando Valley is of projects being promised and not coming to fruition,” Padilla said.

The condition raised the ire of Councilman Mike Hernandez, who feared it might result in no new museums being built.

“I think basically what Mr. Padilla is doing is blackmailing when he is saying we can’t have a Children’s Museum downtown if we don’t have one in the Valley,” Hernandez said. “I just think it’s unreasonable for you to demand a linkage.”

The original agreement would have allowed the city to stop the downtown project by terminating the lease at any stage of planning or construction if ground were not broken on the Hansen Dam museum by June 30, 2004. Hernandez dropped his opposition after Padilla agreed to extend that deadline to 2005.

“I believe the linkage is important to show our commitment to the entire city,” said Councilman Nick Pacheco.

The decision to build two new museums to replace the cramped museum operating near City Hall is supposed to make the hands-on educational programs and exhibits more accessible to Valley children who live far from downtown.

“The great message we will be sending as a City Council is, we do recognize and value all of the communities of Los Angeles,” Padilla said. “We will be able to serve more children and better meet the needs of the city as a whole.”

Ring said the council action was a major step, allowing the museum board to hire architects to design the two museums concurrently.

“I’m truly delighted,” Ring said. “This has been a very, very long process to get here.”

The existing Children’s Museum is 17,000 square feet, which Ring said is inadequate to accommodate the 250,000 children who visit it each year.

Originally, the museum board proposed building one 80,000-square-foot museum in Griffith Park, but opposition from nearby residents forced the board to look elsewhere.

The two new museums will each be much larger than the existing facility, but probably smaller than the 80,000 square feet originally proposed for a single new museum, and each will have different exhibits and emphasis, Ring said.

The 1.2- acre downtown property is at the southwest corner of Alameda and Temple streets, just north of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary. Plans for a major parking garage in the area may require that campus to actually start construction after the Hansen Dam project is built, officials said.

The 1.1-acre Hansen Dam site is at the southeast corner of Foothill Boulevard and Osborne Street, near a planned library and existing swim lakes and baseball fields.

City officials have already allocated $2.5 million in park bonds for an environmental learning center on the site, and that money can be used for the museum, which will incorporate environmental exhibits.