Plan Approved for 2 Children’s Museums

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 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 facet of the plan that requires construction to begin at Hansen Dam as a condition for the lease for the downtown site.

Councilman Alex Padilla, whose district includes the Hansen Dam Recreation Area, said the condition was a necessary “safeguard” to guarantee 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 roughly $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 condition would have allowed the city to cancel the downtown lease if ground is not broken on the Hansen Dam project by June 30, 2004. Hernandez dropped his opposition after Padilla agreed to extend the groundbreaking 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 museums to replace the cramped museum currently operating near City Hall is intended 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 now 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.”

Museum board members also have some prospects for beginning to raise the approximately $7.5 million needed to close the funding gap, Ring said.

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

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

Six other sites, including a parcel next to the North Hollywood subway station, were in the running before the museum board settled this month on the city-owned properties approved by the council.

Councilman Joel Wachs said he would eventually like to see many more campuses of the Children’s Museum than just the two approved Wednesday.

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 one 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.

“The Children’s Museum is a natural fit in the Hansen Dam, given child- and family-oriented activity there already,” Padilla said.

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.

Mayor Richard Riordan is scheduled to attend a ceremony with students from Fenton Avenue Charter School to sign the ordinances that provide for the museum projects.

“I am pleased we could make this investment in our most precious resource--our children,” Riordan said in a statement Wednesday.