Convention Center, Taxpayers Seeing Red

Re “Hotel Seen as Convention Center Savior,” May 20: So the Convention Center is failing and a taxpayer-funded hotel is the answer. Why stop there? If the plan is to entice visitors, why not have taxpayers fund an improved public transit system--including light rail--so visitors can spread their money all over? Why not have taxpayers subsidize the cost of ticket prices at area theme parks to make them more affordable?

Or why not just give visitors taxpayer money to come? People arriving at LAX would be asked if they’re thinking about going to the Convention Center. If they say yes, they’re given $100. Or maybe people would go to the Convention Center if there were a football stadium nearby--oh, that sneaky plan is already in the works. Or maybe they should go ahead and build the hotel but turn it into classrooms. Visitors will just have to stay at the other hotels downtown--the ones that were built without public money.

Or, wait--here’s the solution: Don’t build the hotel to turn it into classrooms; turn the Convention Center into classrooms. And build the light rail system.

Gary Gordon

Venice

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When all of our children are in modern, well-staffed schools and all of our citizens are in decent housing, then and only then should the city use our borrowing power to help finance a new stadium and a Los Angeles NFL team. If this is such a good deal, why don’t the NFL and the proposed franchise holders put their borrowing power behind it?

Don Shaw

Los Angeles

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Regarding the proposed football stadium near Staples Center: I’ve heard no mention of how people would get to these venues. Suppose that a football game, an event at Staples Center and events at the Music Center and the new Disney Concert Hall all occur on the same night. Add to that all the workers who commute on the freeways. True, a subway is available in some areas, but certainly not to many other parts of L.A.

We now have to allow one hour to get to the Music Center from West L.A. (about 20 miles away). It’s hard to imagine what the commute time might be if and when this new stadium is built, but my guess is that traffic congestion would be unimaginable.

Barbara F. Shafer

Los Angeles

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Recently I read about a survey that charted the expenditures of Proposition K funds and concluded that, to date, the bond money, which was voted by L.A. residents in 1996 for kids and family recreation, has been unevenly distributed in the outlying City Council districts as compared with the inner-city districts. I thought the assessment simplistic, as we all know that the inner-city neighborhoods are far more densely populated than the newer neighborhoods, and it is unfair to expect the Proposition K grants to make up for the “under-parked” inner city without condemning property and displacing people.

Now, to read that city leaders are considering “revitalizing” blighted areas of downtown by building 12,900 housing units and up to 6.7million square feet of new commercial and industrial development, including a hotel, and now a new football stadium, I wonder, what are they thinking? Nowhere in the discussion have I heard about open space and parks--those amenities that really do draw people together and provide a respite from the noise, traffic and stress that accompany “revitalization.”

Libby Motika

Prop. K, Regional Volunteer Neighborhood Oversight

Committee, Los Angeles

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Just how many hospital beds fit into a new football stadium?

Jay Galbraith

Los Angeles