Exposition Park’s New Parking Fight

If one thing can start an argument in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park, it’s parking--and the shortage of it for the museums and sports facilities there.

Regular visitors to the Natural History Museum stay away on days of athletic events, complaining that the large Coliseum crowds jam the lots. The limited parking is a major reason that--after the Rams and the Raiders left the Coliseum--the National Football League refuses to return.

In 1985, horrified horticulturists and others loudly protested a plan to build a 1,200-car parking structure under the park’s famed Rose Garden, saying the project threatened the more than 200 varieties of roses there. The plan died on the vine. And in 1999, another scheme to build several high-rise garages for pro-football fans went nowhere.

Now a new parking controversy has erupted in Exposition Park, a 160-acre parcel just south of USC and surrounded by low-income and mostly minority neighborhoods. The squabble has wide ramifications for the urban park’s future, including how much green space and playing fields it should hold.

The California Science Center wants to build a $23-million, four-level subterranean parking structure off Figueroa Street. It is earmarked for property now occupied by a surface parking lot that serves the Science Center, other museums and the Coliseum.

Supporters said the proposed 2,100-space structure makes sense because it would be close to the major access roads: Figueroa and the Harbor Freeway. Its construction also would maintain the overall number of spaces in Exposition Park at about 8,000, while allowing other parking lots to be turned into playing fields--a key objective of a 1993 master plan.

Supporters said the proposed structure, which could be completed by 2003, is crucial to transform Exposition Park into a more appealing destination for residents of adjacent neighborhoods and tourists. The California Science Center, which opened its newly expanded facilities in February 1998, averages 125,000 visitors a month.

Though critics said they don’t oppose underground parking, they argued that the proposed structure should be completely topped with grass and trees on the street level instead of the surface parking the museum wants. In the late 1960s, they noted, the lot was a grassy field dotted with trees, and anything else would hinder the goal of a greener park atmosphere.

The dispute has prompted some bitter words.

“Stupid” is how Assemblyman Roderick Wright (D-Los Angeles), whose field office is at the Science Center, described objections to the project. He carried legislation that provided about $10 million to pay for the project. The rest of the funds will come from the federal government.

“If they stop the parking structure, it will not create more playing fields,” Wright said. “The [current] surface parking lot will just sit there.”

Of the five surface lots next to Vermont Avenue, one has been converted into a soccer field. Officials said the remaining four lots will be turned into playing fields after the underground structure is completed. They insisted that the street-level parking is needed on top. But community activist and area resident Jean Frost urged that the garage be redesigned to ensure green space on top.

“This is not the place to spend $23 million to see something that is ugly. This will damage the future of Exposition Park,” she said of the current plan.

To underscore their objections, two citizens groups--the Adams Dockweiler Heritage Organizing Committee and the North University Park Community Assn.--have sued to stop the project.

The suit alleges that the environmental impact report prepared for the project is insufficient and that the proposal violates the 1993 master plan by not including trees and greenery on the top level.

Jeffrey Rudolph, the California Science Center’s executive director, insisted that the structure will not be unsightly. The proposal includes new educational “gardens” and paths to the north and west of the parking structure. Motorists could view native California plants as they walk from the structure’s lower levels, he said.

Plane Exhibit Is Part of Plan

In addition, an SR-71 spy plane, the world’s fastest jet, would be installed next to the structure. A United Airlines DC-8 jetliner and a DC-3 airliner are already displayed at the park’s northeast corner at Figueroa and Exposition Boulevard. “It will add to the experience of visiting Exposition Park,” Rudolph said.

But Frost and other critics said that widened entrance roads to the new garage would cut into part of Christmas Tree Lane, a grassy median near the Coliseum’s peristyle that is popular for picnickers attending USC football games.

Only at their insistence, said Jim Childs of the Adams Dockweiler group, did the Science Center agree to compensate by improving the median and taking away some of the rough topsoil that turned that area into a lumpy landscape of dying trees and modest grass.

Denise Friedman, who was appointed to the Science Center’s board of directors in 1993 by former Gov. Pete Wilson, said the proposed garage is the best solution for the park.

“You have to balance all the needs of the park,” she said. “Recreational activities, community events, cultural events. . . . there’s a constant tug and pull. We won’t take away parking spaces. We’re trying to replace them with as much underground parking as possible.”

Founded as Agriculture Park in 1909 and renamed Exposition Park a year later, the park has become one of Los Angeles County’s cultural centers.

It became home to the Coliseum and the Olympic swim stadium, major venues for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles; several museums, including the old California Museum of Science and Industry, which later became the California Science Center; the Rose Garden; the California African American Museum, and a famed palm tree that was moved in 1914 from Los Angeles’ old train station to the park’s entrance at 39th and Figueroa streets.

By 1960, construction of the Sports Arena, expansion of the museums and more parking lots left as little as 10% of the park for playing fields and green space.

The 1993 master plan sought to remedy that--a difficult task given the sometimes competing interests of the various entities within Exposition Park. The Science Center is a state facility, but the county runs the Natural History Museum. There is also the Coliseum Commission and the Los Angeles City Department of Parks and Recreation, which is overseeing the renovation of the Olympic swim stadium--built for the 1932 Games--and the surrounding areas and playgrounds.

Getting all of them to agree on anything requires the skills of a diplomat.”There had to be compromise,” Rudolph said, noting that a consensus was sought although the other agencies don’t have to approve the state garage project.

For many years, Exposition Park’s surface lots, the lawns of nearby homes and the USC campus accommodated the cars of sports fans who drove to the Coliseum or Sports Arena.

Parking Needed to Lure Football

But the Coliseum Commission wants a lot more spaces and more secure parking to lure pro football back to the Coliseum. When Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz pushed a plan to bring a new franchise to the 92,000-seat stadium, his proposal included a plan for taxpayers to pay for several above-ground parking structures for 27,000 cars. It quickly died when the powers that run pro football decided to look elsewhere for another venue in the area.

“What were they thinking?” Frost wondered aloud about those proposed garages. “This is a park. They wouldn’t do that in Central Park [in New York City].”

Meanwhile, other efforts to add open space and recreational facilities in Exposition Park are moving ahead. Among them are:

* Creation of Jesse Brewer Park, a corner pocket of green space at the corner of Vermont Avenue and Exposition Boulevard.

* Renovation of the Olympic swim stadium, southwest of the Coliseum, that would include basketball courts and other sports and playground space.

* Two other corner parks, one at Vermont and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and the other at Figueroa and King Jr., are in the planning stages.

* The widening of sidewalks and the planting of trees along Vermont and a portion of King Jr.

No date has been set for a hearing on the lawsuit before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra I. Janavs.