A diverse and growing alliance urge the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to support public access for all to the Temescal Gateway Park.

Temescal Gateway Park is a crown jewel in the precious little parklands of the Los Angeles region. Temescal Gateway Park was purchased and is maintained with public funds by a public agency to benefit all of the public. We support access for all to the Park through programs like Transit to Trails that provide diverse inner city youth and their families and friends with fun, educational, and healthy experiences. Park facilities should be used for overnight camping and similar public programs for all.

The Conservancy should stand behind the decision not to renew a non-renewable private lease for Chabad of Pacific Palisades, Inc. (Palisades Jewish Early Childhood Center). Privatizing Temescal Gateway Park for groups that have political clout with the governor and resource secretary, and enough money to lease public park facilities, would be unfair, bad policy, and bad law. The California statutory definition of Environmental Justice requires “the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes.” The Conservancy should not privatize this precious parkland, and should not set a precedent for privatizing other public parks and facilities.

Pacific Palisades has 404.84 acres of parks per thousand residents, compared to .66 acres in East L.A., .67 in Lynwood, and .78 in Compton. Those are not typos; the disparities are that dramatic. Pacific Palisades is disproportionately white and wealthy, compared to those communities and the County of Los Angeles. As a matter of simple justice, Palisades groups need to share Temescal Gateway Park with others. Source: The City Project, Park Acreage for Cities/Communities/Neighborhoods in Los Angeles County, Chart 1203C, available at www.flickr.com/photos/cityprojectca/999450014.

We urge the Conservancy to support public access for all to the Temescal Gateway Park and facilities.

There will be a special hearing before the Conservancy on the appeal by the private Palisades group to renew the non-renewable lease. Click here to download the agenda and attachments. The hearing is Monday, July 7, 2008, at 7:30 pm at the park. Please write, call, fax, or email the Conservancy and testify live to support public access for all.

Ron Schafer, Chair, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. Temescal Gateway Park. 15601 Sunset Blvd. Pacific Palisades, CA 90272. Tel: (310) 454-1395 Fax: (310) 454-1396 info@smmc.ca.gov.

Download the Public Comments from the diverse alliance (partial list).

Transit to Trails with inner city families from Anahuak Youth Association at Temescal Gateway Park May 2006.

The First African Methodist Episcopal church was organized in 1872. In 1903 construction was completed on a Gothic-style structure based on a design by English architect Sir Christopher Wren. The building was destroyed by fire in 1976.

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Built in 1942, this was the City’s first fire station to be staffed exclusively by African-Americans.

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[D]iabetes is anything but minor. It wreaks havoc on the entire body, affecting everything from hearing and vision to sexual function, mental health and sleep. It is the leading cause of blindness, amputations and kidney failure, and it can triple the risk for heart attack and stroke.

“It is a disease that does have the ability to eat you alive,” said Dr. John B. Buse, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine who is the diabetes association’s president for medicine and science. “It can be just awful — it’s almost unimaginable how bad it can be.”

Read the rest of this story . . .

KNX 1070 News Radio’s Michael Lindner conducts exclusive interviews on the Baldwin Hills oil field with members of the Greater Baldwin Hills Alliance and others. Listen to the KNX broadcast.

Learn more at www.greaterbaldwinhillsalliance.org and www.baldwinhillsoil.org.

A Gothic Revival church erected in 1895.

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Editorial Downtown News June 30, 2008

Contreras School Pool a Squandered Opportunity

Stakeholders in City West and adjacent communities received dispiriting news last week, when city and Los Angeles Unified School District officials announced that the swimming pool at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex once again will be off-limits to the general public this year. This is a failure from our leaders and the district. Worse, it could easily have been prevented.

This is the second consecutive summer that area children and others will not be able to cool off in the pool that is part of a $160 million high school. A hubbub erupted last year, shortly after the school opened, and officials scrambled to address the problem, finally coming up with a plan to shuttle people to other Los Angeles swimming pools. Still, options were theoretically being explored to open the pool to the public in 2008.

Last year one of the most frequently cited obstacles to opening the pool was the cost of lifeguards. This year, the main cited reason for the closure is a concern about keeping the rest of the school secure. The only ones who will have access to the pool on a regular basis will be students at the school who participate in structured programming such as swim lessons and water polo practice. It is a very limited user base.

The community was long led to believe that area inhabitants would have access to the pool. The rhetoric last summer indicated that officials realized there was a short-term problem, but thought it was fixable. The clear expectation was that by this summer the park- and recreation-starved community would be able to dive into the water.

Unfortunately, it looks like there may never be broad access to the Contreras pool. In a Los Angeles Downtown News article last week, a spokeswoman for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa classified the security situation in lessons-learned terms, stating, “When we build new schools, it’s absolutely essential that we design them to be incorporated into the community. In the future, we need to keep the community in mind.”

There’s a problem with that argument. Well before the opening officials described how the facility by the architecture firm Johnson Fain was created with community participation in mind. The entrance to the well-secured school is positioned so that it can be easily separated from classrooms, allowing access to other features of the school while keeping the instruction area safe. The LAUSD proudly touted this feature extensively before, during and after the school was built.

The district and the mayor’s office have changed their tune since last summer. It is no longer, so they say, an issue of paying for lifeguards and a security team. Unfortunately, we don’t know whether to believe this year’s excuse or last summer’s.

No matter what, it is unsatisfying, especially as the district steamrolls ahead on its $20 billion construction effort and local officials pat themselves on the back for opening new mega-schools while making excuses for problems such as the lack of access to the Contreras pool.

It is easy to say nothing can be done about problems created in the past, so district and city officials should know that the community is closely watching a couple other major (and expensive) school projects: The Vista Hermosa high school and park in City West is scheduled to open this fall (supposedly the park will debut in the summer, though it was slated to open last fall) and the High School for the Visual and Performing Arts will arrive in 2009. Together they represent more than a $500 million investment. We expect area stakeholders will have access to sports facilities, fields and other amenities at these complexes.

No one will be happy if the facilities open and the public is shut out again. Just like this year all they can do is look through the fence at the magnificent Contreras pool.

Read more: Open the Miguel Contreras Pool!

Built in 1937, the church was designed by Edith Northmann, who was perhaps the most prolific and respected female architect based in Los Angeles from the 1920’s through the 1940’s.

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Nicolas Garcia Woman with Umbrella Chinatown Central Plaza

. . . As “New Chinatown” marks its 70th anniversary today, those celebrating will include the so-called grandchildren — the second- and third-generation Chinese American professionals like Ron Louie who no longer live in Chinatown but keep a finger there nonetheless.

“We all have our professions, but we want to keep the tradition alive,” said Louie, 69. “If it wasn’t for our parents’ sacrifice, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

The Louies opened their store in Central Plaza because the original Chinatown was razed for Union Station. Its founding families lived at a time when the Chinese were prevented from buying property, obtaining bank loans and securing desirable jobs.

It wasn’t until the next generation that Chinese began to find mainstream professional success.

Many fled Chinatown and moved to the modern Chinese community to the east, in the San Gabriel Valley.

Yet a handful of families, like the Louies, who were part of the neighborhood’s 1938 opening, still cling to the narrow pedestrian streets and pagoda-style buildings.

Many will be present tonight at a retro anniversary celebration meant to evoke the glamour days when Hollywood stars would descend on Chinatown.

Organizers will show historic photographs, a swing band will perform and one of Central Plaza’s more recent tenants will unveil newly installed neon lights along the roof lines of his three buildings — an ornament that long distinguished Central Plaza until the lights fell into disrepair in the 1980s.

“We want to pay tribute to these original merchants,” said George Yu of the Chinatown Business Improvement District, which helped organize the event that’s open to the public. “I think they’d be proud to see what their children have become.” Read the rest of this story . . .

Archeological surveys discovered sites of villages of the Tongva/Gabrieleños at the mouth of Fern Dell Canyon, leaving little doubt that fairly large settlements existed in this area and others.

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