Best of intentions

Thank you for Nicolai Ouroussoff’s “Grand Plans, Flawed Process” (April 4). Unfortunately, we’ve seen this all before and know where it’s heading. I was an architecture graduate student at UCLA in the late ‘70s, working as an intern at the Urban Innovations Group (UIG), the “practice arm” of the school. The city was preparing for a major urban design effort on Grand Avenue and UIG was part of Maguire-Thomas’ team. It was a visionary scheme in that it didn’t rely on one architect or firm to try to design the entire program. Our presentation was stunning, with many detailed models and a slide show of a walk-through in ink and watercolors by Carlos Deniz.

We were stunned by the presentation Deniz made and thought the project was a sure winner. Then, the spokesperson for Cadillac Fairview came up. His presentation was pieces of foam core stacked to represent leasable square footages along the site. He recited the millions of dollars of property built/owned/managed by CF. Incredibly, that was the winner.

CF went bankrupt before the project was started and the whole mess dissolved into the banal assemblage Ouroussoff describes existing there today. The only benefit of the whole process was to introduce young students to the world of cynical politics. How sad to see that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

David Echt

Los Angeles