New Cornfield Proposal Includes Canal and School

Before it was a railroad yard, the Cornfield property in Chinatown just north of downtown Los Angeles got its name from an agricultural past when an irrigation canal ran through the land.

Now, a canal may flow there again.

Representatives of a neighborhood and environmental coalition on Thursday unveiled their vision for turning 40 acres of the abandoned space between Broadway and Spring Street into a park and community asset. It would feature a middle school, two soccer fields, a cultural center and a museum dedicated to the city’s first water system.

And running through the land would be a canal that would be connected to the nearby Los Angeles River. That would mimic parts of the Zanja Madre irrigation system, which was crucial to Los Angeles’ early history in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Members of the Chinatown Yard Alliance said their proposal was more in tune with the wishes of local residents and others, who opposed a controversial project to turn the Cornfield into an 1-million-square-foot industrial park that was supposed to create 1,000 jobs. Gov. Gray Davis’ administration has pledged support to buy the land for a state park.

“Warehouses are not what this community needs,” architect and alliance member Arthur Golding told reporters in Chinatown.

A key component of the new plan, dominating the north end of the Cornfield, would be a new middle school that would include tennis courts and a pedestrian bridge to North Broadway. The new campus is important, alliance members say, because Chinatown is separated by freeways and the river from the closest middle school to it: Nightingale in Cypress Park, which is 2 1/2 miles away.

At the parcel’s southern end would be: a Shaolin institute for Chinese philosophy and martial arts, the first of its kind in North America; a separate Chinese cultural center; and a museum to commemorate the Zanja Madre irrigation system.

It was there that an old section of the original ditch, which delivered water at the time of the pueblo’s founding in 1781, was discovered last year by two amateur archeologists, generations after the railroad yard had covered it over.

As originally envisioned by some activists, a new canal would have fed into a large lake surrounded by housing and shops. Plans for the canal survived, but the lake and housing were not included in the scheme unveiled Thursday.

Thursday’s event was the latest round in the struggle over what to do with the Cornfield. The alliance opposed the industrial park idea pushed by developer Majestic Realty Co. and endorsed by outgoing Mayor Richard Riordan. Then, in September, the coalition sued the city to stop the Majestic project, contending that an environmental impact report should have been required.

Shortly afterward, the coalition won an important victory when Andrew Cuomo, then the U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary, said he would not release $12 million in federal toxic cleanup funds for the site, which had been abandoned by Union Pacific railroad.

Sensing that it lacked support for its plan, Majestic last month threw in the towel and agreed to support the alliance’s alternative proposal, with the proviso that the alliance meet a Nov. 30 deadline to obtain about $30 million to buy the parcel. As part of the new agreement, the Trust for Public Land, a national park conservation group, temporarily secured an option and will transfer it to state ownership.

If that plan fails, Majestic will be free to pursue the industrial park project, city officials say.

“The war isn’t over,” said senior attorney Joel Reynolds of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a key member of the Chinatown alliance. “We just need to get the funds from Sacramento.”

State Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who represents Chinatown, has introduced a bill to buy the parcel for $30 million.

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A Vision in a Cornfield

A development proposal for 40 acres in Chinatown would include a middle school, a canal and a Chinese cultural center.

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Source: Chinatown Yard Alliance