Watts Towers caught in upheaval

The director of the Watts Towers Arts Center says that the safety of visitors to the Towers, a historic, city-run cultural landmark, is being compromised because its parking lot has been bulldozed for a new municipal construction project, leaving only unguarded street parking.

Neighbors are concerned about congestion, and preservationists who cherish Simon Rodia’s fantasia of folk-art sculpture worry that the new building, which would augment the smaller, existing arts center nearby, will obstruct views of the towers. They question why officials decided to place a new, $4.7-million youth arts center near the towers, rather than on city-owned property around the corner that originally was designated for the project.

Meanwhile, an overseer for the state parks department, which owns the towers but leases them to the city to operate and maintain, said he wants to review the documentation L.A. officials gathered in keeping with state and federal requirements to show that building the new arts center would not be detrimental to the towers. The towers get special protection as a National Historic Landmark.

“I’m going to look to see if the proper review was done,” said Sean Woods, a state parks specialist.

From a strictly practical viewpoint, “it seems like ... a waste” to get rid of the parking lot when another site was available, said Oscar Madrigal, 28, who has lived across 107th Street from the towers since his infancy. Madrigal said the destroyed parking lot has grown increasingly important to area residents as former single-family dwellings in the neighborhood have become more crowded.

In separate recent interviews, City Council member Janice Hahn and Margie J. Reese, general manager of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, asked for patience and forbearance over the parking situation, saying the inconvenience will be worth the trouble when the two-story, 6,000-square-foot Charles Mingus Youth Arts Center is finished and buzzing with programs for neighborhood kids. Hahn said she is working on interim parking and security solutions while the construction project goes forward over the next 16 to 18 months. Both officials downplayed concerns that the new building would block views of the towers.

The decision to switch construction sites was made nearly three years ago, Reese said, in deference to neighborhood sentiment against displacing a respected local writer, Eric Priestley, who said he has lived since 1982 in a building that stands where the Mingus center originally was planned. But sentiment seems to have shifted, Reese said, with the destruction of the parking lot last week. The lot accommodated the city staff at the Towers arts center and the 26,000 visitors who center director Rosie Lee Hooks said came to the site during fiscal 2004-05.

Hooks warned that the lack of a parking plan during construction spells trouble for the most prominent cultural attraction in a poor area that struggles to overcome a rough reputation. She said she is concerned about the damage that could be done to Watts’ reputation and the towers’ ability to attract visitors if tourists become crime victims because of a lack of secure parking

“I don’t want to frighten people from coming down here, but it surely needs to be looked at,” she said. Jeanne Morgan, a member of the citizens committee that saved the towers from destruction in 1959 and donated them to the city in 1975, said that her penniless group was trying to find a pro bono lawyer to challenge the city’s decision to forgo an environmental impact report, or EIR, for the Mingus center. State law allows for bypassing the EIR for projects that “will not have a significant effect on the environment.”

Cora Fossett, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Public Works, said that city officials took the proper steps to satisfy state and federal standards, hiring consultants who specialize in historic sites to assess the impact of building the Mingus center 280 feet west of the towers. The experts from the Historic Resources Group “determined that the project would not impact the towers,” Fossett said.

Also pushing for the project to be re-relocated is John Outterbridge, the Los Angeles artist who was director of the Watts Towers Arts Center from 1975 to 1992. “You don’t need conflicting buildings with high-rise profiles that would interfere with the beauty of Rodia’s work,” he said. “The towers need space around them to be really appreciated.”

Sight lines were taken into account when the Mingus building -- named for the great jazz bassist and composer who grew up in Watts -- was designed, said Reese, the Cultural Affairs department head. The two-story structure will top out at 28 feet, she said, and will not substantially diminish views of the three spires, whose heights range from 57 to 99.5 feet.

Looking to solve parking and security issues, Hahn said that one possibility would be to use land east of the towers that is owned by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency -- a move that preservationist Morgan fears would bring vehicles too close to the towers. Hahn said she also would address security concerns. “We’ll find money. There’s no use making the Watts Towers a tourist attraction if we can’t keep people safe.”

A longer-range solution, the council member said, could be to displace Priestley and put parking where his home now stands. Priestley, 61, was one of the original members of the Watts Writers Workshop, established in response to the 1965 Watts riot by novelist/screenwriter Budd Schulberg. “They are riding roughshod over me ... and the honor and pride that I have brought the Watts community as a community-based artist,” Priestley said by e-mail.

Outterbridge said he invited Priestley to stay in the building years ago, with the understanding that the arrangement would be temporary. “I think very highly of Eric,” Outterbridge said, “but I’m a little frustrated right now about the dilemma of the site.”