I don’t listen to the radio much. I remember hearing Art Laboe’s name when I was a kid. I knew he was a DJ, and I may have heard his show when I was growing up. But I really didn’t know much about him until I read his obituary last October.
Reading about his life, I felt a rush of happiness and sadness. I’m not sure I can explain why, but I think it had to do with the fact that he spent his time on earth bringing people together. From the lovers who called in asking him to dedicate a song to someone they cared about, to the kids from East LA, West LA, and South LA who gathered at the live shows he organized.
On Saturday, August 5, thousands of people gathered in Downtown LA to pay tribute to Laboe. DJs spun oldies and live performers took the stage to sing their versions of favorite tunes. People from all over Los Angeles showed up, and everybody seemed to be having a good time.
We are so divided these days. There are so many voices in the media that seem determined to drive us apart. We really need voices that can reach across the lines that divide us. Art Laboe understood the power of music, and he used it to erase those lines. We need people like him now more than ever.
A view of the Sixth Street Bridge from Mateo Street.
The new Sixth Street Bridge opened in July of this year. The first few weeks were pretty chaotic, with drivers doing stunts, daredevils climbing the arches, street artists getting creative with spray paint, and more. Things got so bad the LAPD ended up closing the bridge just to keep a lid on the mayhem. Scenes of crashes, fireworks and people partying were making the nightly news.
Starting across the bridge from the Downtown side.
But now all the chaos seems to have faded away. When I took a walk across the bridge earlier in December, there wasn’t much traffic and I saw only a handful of pedestrians. It was a cool, cloudy day, and things seemed pretty peaceful.
The bridge’s arches create a sense of energy.
I have mixed feelings about the Sixth Street Bridge, which I’ve written about previously. In this post I want to focus on the positive. The bridge really is beautiful. The design, by Michael Maltzan, is impressive, with the fluid lines of the arches rolling off to the horizon. Walking across you get a sense of being lifted into the air, with stunning views of LA’s various landscapes surrounding you on all sides.
The new Sixth Street Bridge is actually a replacement for the previous version, which was built in the early 30s. It’s just one of a series of bridges that run across the LA River between Downtown and East LA, including the Cesar Chavez Bridge, the Fourth Street Bridge, and the Seventh Street Bridge. All of these were built in the first half of the 20th century.
A view of the Fourth Street Bridge.A view of the Seventh Street Bridge.
As you can see from the photo above, this area, which borders Downtown LA, is criss-crossed with multiple layers of infrastructure. Aside from the bridges, you have the concrete surface of the LA River, rows of train tracks, and miles of electric power lines, all surrounded by a massive industrial district.
The arches rolling off to the horizon.
Beneath the bridge you can see scores of large, nondescript buildings which were built for manufacturing and storage. These days you’ll probably find that a number of them have been converted to ghost kitchens and cannabis greenhouses.
A view of the industrial district that lies below the Sixth Street Bridge.Scores of drab buildings cover the landscape.
Nestled inside this vast maze of commercial buildings you’ll often come across pockets that seem neglected or deserted. These spaces are a magnet for street artists that love the expansive, windowless exterior walls.
The desolate spaces between these buildings draw street artists……who love the wide, windowless exteriors.
Coming down on the other side of the bridge, Sixth Street becomes Whittier Boulevard, which is lined with shops and restaurants serving the working class community of Boyle Heights.
The bridge lands in Boyle Heights.
It will probably be a long time before we can really see the impacts caused by the new Sixth Street Bridge. There’s been lots of hype about the upside of this new LA landmark, but it’s also likely to accelerate the waves of gentrification and displacement that have been sweeping across the city. Property values have already risen in Boyle Heights, and so has the number of evictions.
Like I said, though, for the moment I’ll focus on the positive. It is a lovely bridge.
It’s hard to know where to begin. The chain of events that’s unfolded in LA over the past few days is extraordinary, but maybe it’s just the logical outcome of the way this city has been run for the past several years. Honestly, while it’s surprising that the recording of three councilmembers talking about redistricting has been leaked, there’s really nothing surprising about the discussion. Anybody who’s been following LA City politics over the last decade knows that Los Angeles is run by a corrupt elite that’s rigged the system. We should all be angry, but I don’t know why anyone would be surprised.
The first City Council meeting after the Times broke the story was intense. I watched it on video. The Council chambers were filled with angry people chanting and yelling. President Pro Tem Mitch O’Farrell kept trying to calm the protesters down, but they were furious and wanted to let the Council know it. The crowd finally got quiet when it was announced that Councilmember Mike Bonin was going to speak. Bonin’s son was the target of one of the numerous racist slurs that Nury Martinez utters on the recording, and Bonin was visibly upset. He gave an emotional speech condemning racism in general, and thanking all those who had reached out to support him and his family since the news broke.
It’s understandable that Bonin was shaken by the release of recording, and I don’t doubt that his speech was heartfelt. He loves his son, and he knows that this episode will likely cause his son to feel pain and anger. But I wish Bonin would acknowledge all the pain that he’s inflicted on low-income people of color during his time in office. When public comment began, I wasn’t surprised to hear one of the speakers accuse Bonin of hypocrisy because of his actions as a member of the City Council. Referring to Bonin, the speaker exclaimed, “The one that’s pointin’ the finger has done the most name callin’. Put us off Venice Beach. All the black people. He put us all off Venice Beach for some real estate. Fuck you, Mike Bonin.”
Now, I’ve never heard Mike Bonin use any racial slurs, but there’s no doubt that Venice has grown a lot wealthier and whiter during his two terms on the City Council. (Bonin didn’t start this trend, but he’s done nothing to stop it, either.) And Bonin has taken plenty of campaign cash from developers and lobbyists during that time. While Bonin may talk about ending racism and creating a just society, he’s voted over and over again, along with the rest of the City Council, to support policies and projects that promote displacement and gentrification.
Former Councilmember Jose Huizar is facing trial on corruption charges, in part because he helped a developer reduce the amount of affordable housing required for the 520 Mateo project in Downtown. Did Mike Bonin object to reducing the affordable housing requirement? Hell no. He voted to approve the project.
Interestingly, many of the biggest residential projects recently approved in Downtown have zero affordable housing, and the developers of these projects are often allowed to skip paying the Affordable Housing Linkage Fee. Other residential projects in LA have to provide affordable units to get increased density, but in Downtown they can get more density by asking for a Transfer of Floor Area Rights. Has Bonin spoken out against developers using this loophole to dodge affordable housing requirements? Hell no. He voted to approve these projects just like the rest of his colleagues on the Council.
When a property owner wanted to demolish 40 rent-stabilized units in Hollywood to make way for a new hotel, did Mike Bonin object to the eviction of low-income families in the middle of a housing crisis? Hell no. He voted to approve the project. Mike Bonin has joined his fellow councilmembers over and over again in awarding zone changes and general plan amendments to developers, delivering huge profits for investors and fomenting real estate speculation while thousands of low-income people of color were kicked out of their homes and LA’s homeless crisis spiralled out of control. During his time on the Council, Mike Bonin has presented himself as a progressive who wants to fight injustice, but if he really wants to learn about the root causes of injustice, maybe he should take a look in the mirror.
The other speaker who caught my attention was Damien Goodmon, of Downtown Crenshaw Rising. Damien’s comments at the meeting were thoughtful and incisive, as usual, but one thing he said rang especially true for me….
“This entire city government is in need of an exorcism.”
That sentence really sums up how I feel about City Hall right now. The environment created by the Mayor and the City Council is so toxic, and the poison has also bled into the City departments and boards and commissions that are supposed to be serving the people.
Instead of real planning to confront the challenges that LA faces, we get plans formulated by lobbyists and land use attorneys that seemed designed to enrich their clients. Instead of meaningful debate on the issues by well-informed public servants, we get cheerleaders who pat each other on the back for doing a great job, no matter how bad the outcomes are.
Damien is right. LA City government needs an exorcism. But holy water and Latin chants aren’t going to do the job. Instead, we, the people, are going to have to take action. This isn’t just a matter of electing a new mayor and a few new councilmembers. This is a matter of changing the deeply corrupt culture at City Hall. We need to pay attention to what they’re doing. We need to call them out when they’re serving themselves instead of the people. We need to show them that there are consequences for their actions, whether that’s at the ballot box or in the courts.
And this isn’t a short-term commitment. This will take much more than a year or two. This is about long-term, concerted activism with the goal of making sure our public servants really serve us.
The pandemic wasn’t really over in April, but a lot of people, including me, were tired of being shut up at home. I wanted to get out into the world again. I’d been thinking for a while about paying a visit to Los Angeles State Historic Park on the outskirts of Downtown. I finally just got on the train and headed down there.
The park has been a work in progress for over a decade. I wrote a post about it in 2014, when many people still called it The Cornfield. Back then it was mostly just grass and dirt. Since then, it’s been transformed into a well-manicured open space….
It certainly seems popular. On the day I showed up there were plenty of folks enjoying the park, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s impeccably landscaped, with gently curving paths winding through the grass, and rows of beautiful trees. There’s a good-sized field for those who want to get a game going. It seemed like the crowd was mostly younger, with a number of moms and dads and little kids.
It also seemed like the crowd was mostly made up of relatively affluent millennials. I have no hard data on where they came from, but I suspect that many of them live in Downtown. If that’s the case, they’d have to be making fairly good money. The listings on Apartment.com show that most of the studio apartments in the 90012 zip code start around $2,000, with one-bedrooms going for between $2,500 and $3,000. Rents at the Llewellyn, a fairly new building just across the street from the park, go from $2,450 to $5,155.
The City has had a good deal of success in luring people to Downtown, but let’s face it. Downtown is not open to everybody. If we go with the standard assumption that you’re supposed to spend about a third of your income on housing, you’d need to make $72,000 a year to afford a studio apartment in the area. A small family would probably have to have a combined income close to six figures just to get into a one-bedroom.
Back in March, I was listening in on a meeting of the City Council’s PLUM Committee where Director of Planning Vince Bertoni boasted about how proud he was of the City of LA’s Transit-Oriented Development program. I can’t imagine why. While City Planning has approved numerous residential skyscrapers near transit stops over the last decade, transit ridership has been declining steadily since 2014. Even in 2014, LA Metro was actually serving fewer people than it did back in the 80s, and it’s only been downhill since then.
If you want to know how successful LA’s attempts at Transit-Oriented Development have been, take a look at the parking area next to the State Historic Park. It was packed with cars on the morning I was there. And Spring St., which is on the park’s perimeter, was also lined with cars.
Please note in the last photo above that the L Line (Gold Line) Station is visible in the background. I’m sure some of the folks who showed up at the park that day rode the train, but obviously a lot of people decided to drive instead, in spite of the fact that the station is just a few hundred feet from the park entrance.
LA City Planning talks a lot about revitalizing LA’s urban centers, but we need to ask what they actually mean by “revitalization”. The cost of renting an apartment Downtown makes it clear that living there is mostly for the affluent. While thousands of new units have been built in Downtown over the past decade, the vast majority of them are for the upscale crowd. The same is true citywide. According to LA City Planning’s Housing Progress Dashboard, of the more than 184,000 new units that have been approved since July 2013, only about 26,000, or 14%, have been for middle-income, low-income and very low-income households. To be clear, these three categories COMBINED make up just 14% of the new housing approved.
As I said before, the City has been successful in luring people to live in Downtown, and I’m glad of that. Looking at US Census data for the 90012 zip code, which covers much of central Downtown, it’s clear that the area has seen substantial growth. According to the American Community Survey (ACS), the population in 90012 has grown from 29,298 in 2011 to 37,268 in 2020.
Unfortunately, even as Downtown’s population has grown, ridership on transit lines serving the area has been dropping steadily. The graph below shows the changes in ridership on lines serving Downtown in 2014 and 2019. It includes all rail lines serving the area, but only selected bus lines.
You can see there’s been a significant drop. It’s important to point out that the biggest decline was on the A Line (Blue Line), and much of this was due to the fact that portions of the line were closed during 2019 for repairs and upgrades. (They didn’t do much good. Problems arose soon after the line re-opened.)
But even if we pull the A Line out of the chart, we still see a loss in ridership. If the City’s Transit-Oriented Development program is such a success, then why is transit ridership declining in Downtown, even as the population grows. (If you don’t trust my numbers, and you want to do your own research, visit Metro Ridership Stats. Under the heading Systemwide (Bus and Rail), click Details.)
I think the answer has to do with the kind of people who are moving to Downtown. While I hear a lot of hype about young urbanites who love walkable neighborhoods, the crush of cars I saw crowding around State Park leads me to believe that many of Downtown’s new residents own some kind of vehicle. Of course, that’s just my personal view based on my personal experience. To get a more accurate idea of how many Downtown residents are car owners, let’s take another look at the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey.
Looking again at the 90012 zip code, let’s check out the stats for vehicle ownership in 2011.
2011 ACS Data on Vehicles Available to Population in 90012 Workers 16 Years and Over in Households
No vehicle available 10%
1 vehicle available 42.9%
2 vehicles available 36.4%
3 or more vehicles available 10.7%
Now let’s look at the stats for 90012 in 2020.
2020 ACS Data on Vehicles Available to Population in 90012 Workers 16 Years and Over in Households
No vehicles available 6.6%
1 vehicle available 42.4%
2 vehicles available 40.0%
3 or more vehicles available 11.0%
You can see that the number of workers 16 years and over with no vehicle available dropped from 10% to 6.6%. The number with one vehicle available is basically unchanged. Those with two vehicles available went up from 36.4% to 40%. These are not huge changes, but they do show that percentages of workers 16 years and over with access to a vehicle has gone up, not down. And when we consider that the population in 90012 rose from 29,298 in 2011 to 37,268 in 2020, this seems to indicate that there are a lot more cars than there used to be in Downtown. Put this together with the drop in transit ridership, and it’s hard to understand why the City thinks its efforts at Transit-Oriented Development have been a success. (If you believe there are a lot more people walking and biking in the central city, feel free to show me the data. I’ve looked, and I can’t find anything less than six years old.)
I want to emphasize that I’m a transit rider and I don’t own a car. I also want to say that I believe we need to focus new development around transit hubs, in areas where jobs and businesses are close by. In theory all this is great. In reality, though, the City of LA doesn’t seem to have achieved anything. In fact, it seems like the numbers are going in the wrong direction. And if we’re going in the wrong direction, shouldn’t the City assess the situation, find out what’s wrong, and try to do better?
Unfortunately, rather than being used as a strategy to create a more sustainable city, Transit-Oriented Development seems to have become an excuse to approve residential projects that are far too expensive for the average Angeleno. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at hearings held by City Planning where staff and/or Commissioners claim that big, new residential projects geared toward the affluent are exactly what the City needs to get people out of cars and onto busses and trains. When I present data showing that transit ridership has been going down since 2014, they don’t seem to hear. I’ve never gotten a response. The projects are always approved.
I think the State Park is cool. I’m glad people are spending time there. But I don’t buy the story that young urbanites are ditching their cars for busses, trains and bikes. The cars lined up across the street from the park seem to tell a different story, one that City Hall doesn’t want to hear.
These days it’s difficult for seniors in LA to find affordable housing. And it’s even more difficult to find affordable housing that’s properly maintained. The seniors at Chinatown’s Cathy Apartments have been struggling to deal with elevators that don’t work, doors that won’t close, broken electrical outlets, leaky faucets and other significant habitability issues, without getting much help from the City of LA.
But last year the Chinatown Community for Equitable Development (CCED), an activist organization based in Chinatown, stepped up and started demanding that local officials pay attention. They began a social media campaign to put pressure on Councilmember Gil Cedillo and Congressional Rep Jimmy Gomez to take action.
It worked. Community pressure has forced Cedillo and Gomez to get involved. And the LA Times reports that local, state and federal agencies have launched investigations into the causes of the problems at Cathay Manor. The LA City Attorney’s office has also filed a complaint. The landlord and the organization that operates the building have plenty of excuses, but according to the Times they’re getting around $3.5 million annually from the federal government.
So why can’t they take care of basic habitability and safety issues? According to the complaint filed by the City Attorney’s Office, elevators are not operational, fire protection systems are defective, fire extinguishers are inoperable and inaccessible, and the owners can’t even keep the building free of graffiti and trash.
The tenants at Cathay Manor shouldn’t have to deal with these problems. Senior citizens on fixed incomes need access to safe, clean, affordable housing. But not only has the City of LA failed by a long shot to provide the housing that citizens need, the City Council is doubling down on policies that promote huge density bonusses to developers in exchange for a small number of affordable units. According to the LA Department of City Planning’s Housing Progress Reports web page, the City has approved 172,613 new units since July 2013. Of that total, 87% have been for Above Moderate Income households. (Above Moderate Income households are defined as households that earn 120% or more of the Area Median Income.) The remaining 13% are for Moderate Income, Low Income and Very Low Income households. The recently adopted Housing Element and the proposed New Zoning Code will only exacerbate this intolerable imbalance.
If you want to read more about the situation at Cathay Manor, the Times story is below, along with the press release from the City Attorney’s Office and the complaint they filed.
I love cities. And I love Downtown LA. But the older I get, the more I think about the damage that cities do to the environment. At the beginning of the 20th century, Downtown was largely undeveloped. In a little over a hundred years, it’s become a dense urban landscape crowded with office buildings and residential towers, crisscrossed by roads and freeways. As a result, LA is hotter and drier, the air is dirtier, and like every other urban center, we’re contributing to climate change in a big way.
I was wandering around Cal Plaza a while ago, and ran across a piece of Downtown I’d forgotten about. As I looked out over the city in the direction of Hill Street, I saw that directly below me there was a small park. It took me a minute to realize it was the same park I’d seen many times at the intersection of Fourth and Hill. It’s been fenced off for years. Much of the greenery is dry, and the trees could certainly use some attention, but it was so cool to run across a patch of green space in the middle of all the steel and concrete.
Actually, it’s not technically a park. It’s a small patch of land called Angels Knoll that had been owned by the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA). (I assume it got the name because it’s right night next to Angels Flight.) When the CRA was dissolved in 2012, a petition was circulated asking the City to turn the land over to the Department of Parks & Recreation. But that didn’t happen. As one of the few remaining undeveloped parcels in the Downtown area, the property is worth a fortune. The decision was made to put it up for sale.
A June, 2021 memo from CRA/LA, the successor agency to the CRA, sets the price of the parcel at $50 million. The buyer, Angels Landing Partners, is actually a joint venture by the Peebles Corporation, MacFarland Partners and Claridge Partners. According to the LA Department of City Panning web site, the proposed Angels Landing project involves the construction of two skyscrapers, one rising 63 stories and the other rising 42 stories. In addition to two hotels and 72,000 square feet of commercial space, the project also includes 180 condos and 252 apartments. Apparently some affordable housing is supposed to be provided, but at this point it’s not clear how much.
Of course, the project will generate lots of jobs and economic activity. According to the Environmental Impact Report, it will also generate 10,179 metric tons of CO2 equivalent during the construction phase alone. Beyond that, it will contribute to the steadily increasing temperatures in the LA area, along with a number of other massive projects planned for Downtown, Hollywood, Warner Center and elsewhere.
And we’ll also be losing one of the few remaining patches of green in Downtown. City Hall has made its priorities clear. They want the skyscrapers. Of course, LA was built by developers and politicians who prioritized growth over everything else. That’s how LA got to be what it is today. But the older I get, the more I feel that this addiction to growth is incredibly destructive. Our warming climate and shrinking water resources are a direct result of unchecked development.
We really don’t need another skyscraper. We absolutely need more parks.
The Sixth Street Bridge’s arches rising above the surrounding landscape.
Work on the new Sixth Street Bridge is still moving along. Originally scheduled for completion in 2019, it’s now supposed to be finished by summer of 2022. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who follows the progress of large infrastructure projects. It’s also no surprise that the cost of the project has risen from $420 million to $588 million. But even though repeated delays and cost overruns are fairly common with projects of this kind, it seems like LA is especially prone to these problems. (I guess it could be worse. Just take a look at the California High Speed Rail.)
LA River running beneath the Sixth Street Bridge.
When the bridge is done, there are plans to create a 12-acre park within the bed of the LA River, with public art and recreational programs. I hate to be cynical, but it will be interesting to see what actually materializes. While the FTA and CalTrans are helping with funds for the construction of the bridge, I don’t know if they’re also kicking in for the park. I mention this because the LA Recreation & Parks Department is chronically underfunded, and can’t even maintain existing parks. I’m also concerned because it seems some of the features that were supposed to be included in the new bridge have been cut. The original design had protected bike lanes. Apparently those are gone. And I’ve seen some chatter on-line about the removal of the stairs that would have connected the bridge to the park, but I haven’t been able to find any confirmation.
Downtown side of the bridge.
But the biggest cause for concern is that the completion of the bridge will bring further gentrification and displacement on the east side of the LA River. Many residents of Boyle Heights and surrounding communities are worried that the Sixth Street Bridge will bring another wave of real estate investors looking to cash in. The eviction of the seniors at Sakura Gardens is not a good sign.
Many people are excited about the new Sixth Street Bridge and its promised benefits. I hope their optimism is justified. When I first heard about the project years ago, I was excited, too. I have to say that now my hopes are outweighed by a deep cynicism. The City of LA’s leaders have been promising a more livable, equitable city for years. Instead it seems that the population is increasingly divided and increasingly desperate. Bridges are supposed to bring people together, but I’m worried that this one will end up driving people apart.
Unbelievable as it may seem, there are folks in Washington who seem to be gearing up for another war. The current administration has been doing everything it can to put the screws on Iran, and now it looks like they’re taking it to the next level. Have they already forgotten about about the lives lost during the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Have they forgotten that we’re still fighting a war in Afghnistan, which has become the longest war in US history?
Today protesters gathered in Pershing Square to show their opposition to another war. Speakers railed against the idea of the US embarking on yet another bloody conflict. One speaker asked why it is that Washington can always come up with money to fund wars, but somehow there isn’t enough money to house the people living on the streets. I’ve heard that question asked many times over the years, and I’m still waiting for an answer.
I have to admit I was initially ticked off that I couldn’t get into the LA City Council meeting on Friday. I’d taken the subway to Downtown that morning because I wanted to speak about an item on the Council agenda. But when I got to City Hall, I found a huge line of people crowding the entrance, and when I finally got inside it turned out they weren’t allowing any more people in. The Council chambers were full up.
The crowd at the entrance to City Hall.
But sometimes you have to be flexible, and actually I was glad I made the trip anyway. It turned out that hundreds of people had shown up that day because they were worried that their jobs were going to be taken by robots. Earlier this month the Board of Harbor Commissioners approved a permit that would allow shipping giant Maersk to automate much of its operations at the Port of LA. But Councilmember Joe Buscaino, who represents the area, wrote a motion asking the City Council to assert jurisdiction in the matter and send it back to the Board for reconsideration.
It’s easy to see why people who work at the Port are freaked out. Maersk isn’t the first shipping company to push for automation, and it won’t be the last. Hundreds of jobs could disappear if Maersk goes forward, and as more companies follow suit it will probably lead to the loss of thousands of jobs. This, in turn, would be a devastating blow to San Pedro and Wilmington, where a lot of the local economy depends on those jobs.
Workers gathered on the lawn outside City Hall.
The crowd that showed up at City Hall on Friday was mostly made up of members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Many of them wore T-shirts and carried signs protesting the move to automation. Those who couldn’t get inside gathered on the lawn outside City Hall where audio of the meeting was broadcast over a sound system. You could hear speaker after speaker telling the Council that they had to take action, and the meeting was frequently disrupted by roars of approval from those who had made it inside.
The ‘Yes to Boots, No to Robots’ T-shirts were a popular item.
Lots of folks carrying signs.
It’s true, robots don’t pay taxes.
In the end the Council voted unanimously to send the matter back to the Board of Harbor Commissioners for reconsideration, but the issue is far from resolved. Even if the Board changes its mind and decides to rescind the permit, Maersk claims it’s legally entitled to go ahead with the conversion anyway. They argue that other ports are automating and that they have to do the same if they want to stay competitive. And another complication is that for years the City of LA has been pushing shippers to move from diesel to electric technology. There are huge pollution issues in Wilmington and San Pedro because the Port of LA burns massive amounts of fossil fuels. Maersk’s conversion to automation has the potential to radically reduce emissions.
This is really just one more battle in what promises to be a long and painful war. Automation advocates claim that machines don’t just take jobs, that they can also create jobs, but no one has been able to spell out exactly how that’s going to happen. Academics say that more automation will drive increased economic activity which will bring new employment opportunities, but they don’t go into details except to say that the unemployed can move into the service sector. Really? Retailers are already replacing clerks with machines. Transit network companies like Uber are planning to shift to driverless cars. And fast food chains are quickly building automated outlets. In classic fashion, economists who make six figures are telling low-income workers not to worry about automation, because in the long run it will boost GDP and everyone will be a winner. But people who live in the real world have been dealing with wage stagnation for years, while their paychecks are being eaten away by rising housing and healthcare costs.
The workers at the Port of LA are right to be scared.
For more details, check out this story from the LA Times.
No one will miss the parking structure that used to stand at the corner of First and Grand in Downtown. It was demolished recently to make way for the Grand Avenue Project, which will be rising on the site you see in the image above. I was walking down First earlier this month, on my way to the Disney Concert Hall, and as I rounded the corner onto Grand I was startled to see nothing but clear, blue sky on the opposite side of the street. It’s strange how the disappearance of something familiar can reshape the space around it.
A view of buildings surrounding the Grand Avenue Project site.
The Grand Avenue Project has been in the works for years. The completed project will include a 20-story hotel and a 39-story residential tower with 20% affordable housing, as well as retail, restaurants, and a public plaza. The complex was designed by Frank Gehry, and will be situated in the midst of the Downtown cultural hub that includes the Colburn School, MOCA, The Broad, the Disney Concert Hall and the Music Center.
Even though nobody will be mourning the loss of the parking structure, I thought I’d post a few photos to mark its passing. I’ve been taking lots of pictures of Downtown in recent years, trying to document some of the changes that are taking place. It’s interesting to watch the landscape as it’s going through these transformations.
A view of the demolished parking structure with the Disney Concert Hall in the background.
A view looking down Olive. The parking structure is on the right.
Stairs on the north side of the parking structure.
Interior of the parking structure.
A view from the top level.
One loss I am mourning is the removal of a number of street trees along the west and north sides of the project site. While the ones on Grand were fairly young, the ones on First were fully grown and provided extensive canopy. I’m sure new trees will be planted once the project is completed, but that’s at least a couple years away, and new development is taking a heavy toll on the City’s urban forest. The folks at City Hall keep talking about how important trees are for sustainability, but they keep getting cut down. If there was a program in place to monitor the urban forest and ensure its growth, that would be one thing, but no such program exists and the City does a lousy job of monitoring the situation. We can have new development and a healthy urban forest, but we need to plan to make that happen.
Trees that used to stand on First Street.
Trees that used to line Grand Avenue.
Here’s an article from Curbed about the groundbreaking for the Grand Avenue Project.
I don’t know how long construction is expected to take, but I imagine we’re talking at least a couple years. I was a little concerned by a paragraph toward the end of the Curbed article that talks about financing. Apparently the funding that allowed this project to move forward was obtained last year from a couple of Chinese firms. My concerns may be groundless, but it made me think about the stalled Oceanwide project near the Staples Center. That’s also funded by Chinese money, and while nobody’s sure exactly what’s going on, it sounds like they’re having serious cash flow problems. For years there was a flood of Chinese money fuelling development Downtown, but that seems to be coming to an end. Hopefully the funding for the Grand Avenue Project is rock solid, and things will keep moving forward.
The Horizon and the Skyline 