L.A. Faces Criticism Over Plans for Parking Lot in Little Tokyo

Los Angeles officials plan to purchase a 10-acre parcel in downtown Los Angeles on the edge of Little Tokyo for $43 million to create a large parking lot where a private developer had proposed to build hundreds of apartments.

The parking lot proposal, which will be reviewed by the City Council today, is viewed by some as a practical way for the city to bank land for other uses in the future. But some urban planners say the plan is shortsighted and undermines efforts to increase housing and revitalize the central city.

“Anything that goes toward parking instead of much-needed housing is a detriment to the city,” said downtown architect Andrew Liang. “It just seems to be a very poor sort of urban planning.”

The notion of spending a sizable chunk of citywide parking revenue to acquire the downtown site also has raised concerns.

“Maybe there is a parking shortage downtown but ... there are many other parts of the city that likewise suffer from a lack of parking,” said City Councilman Jack Weiss, who represents portions of the Westside and San Fernando Valley. “I think we have to be wise to spread our limited resources equitably across the city when addressing the need for parking.”

City officials say they need the property at the northeast corner of First and Alameda streets, the former site of the Los Angeles Soap Co. plant, to replace about 1,000 parking spaces that will be lost when the Art Park property is developed into a public plaza, which is slated to include a children’s museum. Parking at that location is used primarily by city employees.

The city considered building a parking garage underneath the Art Park site at Temple and San Pedro streets and looked at other sites, said Jerry Miller, who spearheaded the deal for the Office of the Chief Legislative Analyst. The property has been vacant for more than a decade since it was purchased by an affiliate of Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen.

Miller said the city has no other long-term uses planned for the site, part of which is to be sold for a rail transit station for a line to serve East Los Angeles. “The only current planned use is as surface parking,” he said.

The lot purchase would be financed with money from the city’s special parking revenue fund, which pays for public parking lots, garage maintenance and construction. The fund has been hit hard by the much larger-than-expected deficit at the city-owned Hollywood & Highland parking garage. While the city continues to look for a “comprehensive” solution to remedy the Hollywood & Highland shortfall, Miller said the fund has sufficient capital to finance a purchase of the downtown site.

News that the city planned to purchase the land surprised many downtown observers who regarded the parcel as a prime residential site. Several developers had expressed interest in the property, and Atlanta-based Trammell Crow Residential was negotiating to buy a portion of the parcel to build as many as 600 apartments when it heard that the city had agreed to buy the same land.

“We were dropped,” said Alex Wong, a partner in Trammell Crow Residential, one of the nation’s largest apartment developers. “I would have gladly sold a big chunk back to the city for parking ... and would have cooperated in helping the city achieve its goal.”

Wong said his firm remains interested in developing housing in the area and has a contract to buy a parcel across the street.

“I think that the east side [of downtown] has the best residential feel existing in downtown today,” Wong said. “It’s a place where you have live jazz, restaurants and shops open after work hours. You don’t have those things” in other parts of downtown.

Some real estate observers say there are plenty of downtown sites and buildings suitable for residential development. The supply of housing being built and planned might even exceed demand, said real estate broker Mark Tarczynski at CB Richard Ellis, which is handling the sale of the soap plant site.

“There is still quite a bit of housing in the pipeline in downtown Los Angeles,” Tarczynski said. “Taking this housing out of the mix makes sense.”

Despite the city’s insistence that it has no long-term plans for the site, other observers say the lot purchase could be part of a plan to ensure that the city bureaucracy has a place to expand near the Civic Center. Potential uses for the site include a police headquarters and homes for city agencies now spread out in leased space.

“Clearly, parking is not the highest and best use of the property,” said downtown developer Dan Rosenfeld. “Over time, there is no telling what future needs there might be for this property.”

Another urban planner says downtown Los Angeles has all the surface parking lots it needs.

“If the goal is to make a vibrant downtown, surface parking is not the way to do it,” said John Kaliski, a former principal architect for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. “We should be working beyond surface parking. We need vision.”