The Kernel of a Solution

For years now, a large vacant lot near Chinatown has been a weed- and trash-strewn battleground for a nasty fight over competing development visions. But with a little creativity and good will--two qualities often in short supply in land-use disputes--the forlorn Cornfields site could become a model for urban planning that meets local needs while enhancing the whole city.

Mayor Richard Riordan has tapped most of the 47-acre site, an old railroad yard known as the Cornfields, for an industrial park, touting the jobs that the project could bring to this poor downtown neighborhood. The mayor’s plan has won approval from a city planning agency and is attracting serious money and interest from big-league developers.

But others, including a coalition of community and environmental activists, see the land, still owned by the Union Pacific Railroad, as the anchor for a neighborhood missing important city services. Instead of warehouses and light manufacturing, they want a community center, a park, maybe even housing on the land. Because one corner of the site is very near the Los Angeles River, it has also drawn interest from state lawmakers, mayoral candidates and a dogged group of river enthusiasts, all eager to develop green space amid the detritus along the flood control channel.

There is merit in both proposals. But years of debate, lobbying, and environmental review have only hardened each side’s resolve to see through its vision for the Cornfields. Lawsuits, frustration and anger have been the only results so far, and the Chinatown community continues to lose out on the benefits that would come with either vision.

Meanwhile the Cornfields has become another sorry example of development gridlock. The story is more or less the same across the city: Local residents are deeply suspicious of developers whose grand--or modest--plans mean more traffic and people or more blight in their neighborhoods. To underscore their fears, residents are quick to point to shopping malls built next to homes, or industrial parks sited near schools. For their part, developers are understandably exasperated with the glacial pace at which plans are vetted and angry at the unyielding resistance to any change, especially projects that promise economic returns to declining neighborhoods. That’s what’s happened with the Cornfields plans.

In recent weeks, however, a fragile consensus has begun to form around a creative proposal that could break the Cornfields gridlock and perhaps serve as a model for other protracted land-use battles. The deal shaping up would work as follows: the Friends of the River and the Chinatown Yards Alliance--the most vocal proponents of the park and community center option--would, along with its allies, have a year or so to put together enough money to buy the land from the railroad and turn it over to the public for development as a park or for other recreational purposes. If they fail to meet the appraised purchase price, likely to be between $20 million and $30 million, within the agreed time, the industrial park plan goes forward without further delay and opposition.

The biggest losers in the lengthy Cornfields saga have been Chinatown’s residents, who have neither the jobs the industrial park would create nor the amenities that a park or community center would bring. We urge the parties to make their deal.