Little Tokyo Group Backs LAPD Plans

As City Hall forged ahead last week with plans for temporary Los Angeles Police Department offices, the site of a new, permanent headquarters continued to cause soul-searching in nearby Little Tokyo.

The Little Tokyo Community Council recently voted to support a city plan to build the new police headquarters on an 11-acre parcel at Alameda and Temple streets, near the Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple.

The community council worked against another city plan to also build a jail near the temple, and there was some opposition to locating the new police headquarters there. Opponents said doing so would diminish future opportunities for housing, entertainment and retail development at the site, which is near an anticipated light-rail station.

The police headquarters and its accompanying security perimeter could create a “dead zone” around the station, said Ron Fong, planning director for the Little Tokyo Service Center. “That’s not the wisest form of development.”

In addition to the police facility, the plan calls for a new fire station, emergency operations center and at least one parking structure on Temple Street. A 512-bed jail would be built at Los Angeles and Temple streets.

But the inclusion of retail space and a parking structure at 1st and Judge John Aiso streets was key to winning community backing for the plan, said Ron Deaton, the city’s chief legislative analyst.

An alternate plan floated by the city would have kept the headquarters closer to the existing Parker Center site, but relegated public parking to 1st and Alameda streets. Community members had hoped the city would put a public parking structure closer to Little Tokyo’s business district. The community’s suggestion was ruled out by the city, which cited higher costs and construction delays. The LAPD also voiced concern about locating a public parking structure near its headquarters.

“It wouldn’t make sense for us not to consider strong security measures to protect our facilities,” said Yvette Sanchez- Owens, commanding officer of the LAPD’s facility management division. She said the department would ask the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday to make a formal recommendation on the two city plans.

The Little Tokyo Community Council, a collection of more than 80 civic, business, resident, nonprofit, arts and religious organizations, voted 40 to 6 late last month to support putting the new police headquarters at Alameda and Temple streets.

A motion to approve the plan garnered community support, not only because it contained the public parking structure, but also because it had been modified to address a variety of community concerns, including possibly leaving Judge John Aiso Street open instead of converting it into a cul-de-sac.

The East West Players, an Asian Pacific American theater company whose marquee is located off Aiso, said it would oppose creation of a cul-de-sac.

Locating the police headquarters at Alameda and Temple streets also was supported by a Japanese American World War II veterans group, which was concerned that replacing Parker Center near its current site could cast a shadow over the group’s Go for Broke Monument and destroy the surrounding ambience.

“I think it was the best compromise because we know the veterans didn’t want a 12-story structure near their monument,” said the Rev. Noriaki Ito, chairman of the community council and head minister of Higashi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple on East 3rd Street.

Not everyone agreed. “We’re playing hot potato with Parker Center,” said Jeff Liu, a development associate with Visual Communications, an Asian Pacific American media arts center. “Where is people’s integrity?” Liu said he would have preferred that the headquarters stay near its current site, rather than moving closer to the temple.

Michael Richards, who sits on the board of the Hompa Hongwanji temple, took issue, not only with the plan to build the headquarters near the temple, but also to its being near the anticipated light-rail station along Alameda Street between 1st and Temple streets. “It’s just not a great impression, having the police headquarters as a symbol of Little Tokyo,” he said.

But Deaton had a different view: “I think pulling up and seeing some police presence provides a greater sense of security. I don’t think it’s an entire negative.”