Streetsblog Los Angeles

Ben Caldwell, founder of the KAOS Network, opens the pitch session by describing the origins of the project. (photo: sahra sulaiman)

When is the last time you used a public payphone?

Yeah, think hard for a second.

It’s been a while, huh?

That’s what Ben Caldwell of the KAOS Network and the good people at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab thought.

After Caldwell saw a segment on the repurposing of payphones as ATMs, he looked at the dead phone outside his door at KAOS and, as he is rather magically wont to do with just about everything he comes across, wondered what artists could do with it.

Word is slowly getting out that Leimert Park is a cultural oasis with a rich history in a lovely neighborhood and many residents are concerned that rapid gentrification could push out the very people and businesses that make it so special.

Could the humble payphone, Caldwell wanted to know, be transformed into something that could serve as a portal to that cultural history while also acting as a draw that could benefit the businesses in the community?

As he is also rather wont to do, Francois Bar, professor at Annenberg’s School of Communications and Journalism, said, why, yes, it probably could.

And behold: the Leimert Phone Company was born. Read more…

Will it be?

(It’s taking a long time to process the video from last night. We’ll have full, cleaner, copies of Gandy and Smith’s presentations and the Q and A. late tonight or tomorrow. – DN)

The February 2011 MyFigueroa! meeting was something of a love-in. The room was packed with advocates who loudly applauded the project both with actual applause and during open comment. Two years ago, the negative comments either mocked the vision of the dreamers from Gehl Architects or expressed anger over the lack of Spanish translation tools in the presentation.

Last night was a different story. The room was still packed, with 200 people people lining the walls and back of the room even before the presentation began. State Senator Currren Price, running to replace Jan Perry in Council District 9, watched the presentations and the question and answer period that followed. Loud applause greeted both the introduction by pro-bike visionary Charlie Gandy and the presentation of the proposal by Melani Smith of Melendrez. The public comment was quite a bit more skeptical.

The Figueroa Corridor Streetscape project (MyFigueroa!) seeks to transform the Figueroa Corridor into a complete, multimodal street that better serves the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders, while still accommodating drivers. The changes include a road diet, new bike lanes, improved sidewalks, zebra crosswalks, space for a streetcar at sometime in the future and even cycletracks along 3 miles of Figueroa Street, Hope Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard.

When the comment cards are counted, there will likely be a large difference between the feelings of those in the room and the feelings of those that spoke. The room was dotted with advocates, including ones from regional groups such as the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition and South L.A. specific ones such as TRUST South L.A. These groups support the project, but were content to let the general audience hold the floor.

The closest remarks to advocacy testimony came from a young man wearing a MOM RIDAZZ vest who asked why the separated bike lanes are regular bike lanes for part of the project area. Nat Gale, from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s transportation team, also spoke in favor of the project.

As is usually the case, some of the criticism was downright silly, such as concerns that the project would lead to increased property value and property speculators in Downtown Los Angeles or that increased car traffic congestion would lead to a decrease in property values or that the project would hinder deliveries to the convention center or L.A. Live. For the record, there’s a street known as L.A. Live Way which has its own ramp access to the I-110 which was built for precisely the purpose of delivering goods to the Convention Center and L.A. Live.

“Figueroa is a regional street.” Read more…

Change I can believe in. New designs for 11th and Hope. Click on the image for a high-res version.

After over two years, the MyFigueroa team is finally ready to present new designs and a new project to create a truly multi-modal corridor to connect Downtown to South Los Angeles.

There’s a lot of ways to attend tonight’s meeting, beginning at 5:30 pm at Andrew Norman Hall Orthopaedic Hospital, 2400 S. Flower St. at Adams. Parking will be available across the street in a private lot, the Bike Coalition will sponsor free bike valet, and TRUST South L.A. is planning a group bicycle ride (details available here.) If you can’t make it, Streetsblog will be broadcasting the presentation at Streetsblog TV and interviewing some of the presenters. Video will be available tomorrow morning here on Streetsblog with some minor editing. The full broadcast will be available on Streetsblog TV immediately.

Read more…

The last time I wrote a full piece on Community Coalition (CoCo) I was at their election-night viewing party last November. The energy in the room was electric — from the dancing toddlers all the way up to the dancing retirees. The success of their get-out-the-vote and Prop 30 door-knocking campaigns had provided a powerful counterweight to the Times’ declaration that “South L.A.’s zeal for politics [had] faded.”

Even before the celebrations had come to a close that night, Executive Vice President Alberto Retana had invited me to attend an exploratory meeting for an as-yet unborn youth coalition.

They had been successful in reaching high-schoolers and those over age 35, he said. Now, it was time to tap into the 20-somethings and engage them on their needs and aspirations for their communities. They may have been an important voting block for the national election, but a formula for keeping them involved in local politics and causes has proven elusive.

Fast-forward a few months later and South L.A. Roots has arrived.

They will be holding their inaugural mixer this coming Friday, April 12th, from 8 – 11 p.m. at CoCo‘s headquarters in South L.A.

That’s right — a mixer. Not a meeting. Read more…

"Anything Can Be Beautiful When You Look" mural near Manual Arts High School. (photo: sahra)

As Damien noted in his post on city-wide projects, voting on proposals submitted for the L.A. 2050 Challenge begins today.

Sorting through the nearly three hundred proposals vying for the $100,000 prize to find the true gems is probably more than a little daunting for the casual observer. I can only imagine the questions running through somebody’s head as the projects begin to blur together: Does the group with the super-cool idea have a good track record of working in the community? Or the capacity to follow through? What about the less flashy ideas? Are they actually better for the community in the long run? Which organizations are best suited to truly empower those they seek to help? Which projects genuinely offer the most effective bang for the buck?

I am really happy to report that the ones submitted by some of my favorite organizations in South L.A. are both solid and likely to make a great contribution to the development of the community. More importantly, perhaps, instead of giving in to the temptation to come up with shiny, new-fangled ideas, the groups submitted proposals for projects intended to build on the important initiatives they have been working towards for a long time or enhance efforts they already have in motion.

The Advancement Project: Safe Streets for Watts Students
The Advancement Project has been doing amazing work with the residents of housing developments, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), LAPD, and other community members in Watts over the past year. They have worked to hold HACLA accountable for what goes on within the developments and helped residents build more trusted relationships with the LAPD officers assigned to them. These partnerships have made the community safer overall by reducing crime. Now they want to take that work beyond the projects in order to assist those kids in getting to and from school safely. Working with Safe Routes to School, they propose to train community members to act as monitors on the streets, helping kids go back and forth safely. They also propose having gang interventionists and trained teachers at school ready to welcome the youth with positive messages and contribute to making the environment safer for learning and recreation. Learn more about their efforts here. Read more…

Pothole? I don't see any potholes here. (photo: sahra)

Just this past Wednesday, I wrote about how a pothole of epic proportions had bounced a small child out of his carrier and nearly been his undoing.

Returning from Watts yesterday, I was speechless to find it paved over.

“Stunned” is probably a better word.

For the past year and a half, I have watched the pothole greedily gobble pavement until it grew into something that could probably have been spotted from the International Space Station. And, while everybody cursed it, swerved their way around it, and stared at it in amazement, it continued to sit there.

We posted a brief story, John Jones III from the East Side Riders sent it around to the offices of South L.A.’s elected officials on behalf of the South L.A. bike clubs, and voilà!, one day later, no pothole.

We are grateful for the responsiveness of officials to our concerns and hope that they are dealing with whatever the source of water is that carved out that sinkhole in the first place so that it does not reappear any time soon.

The epic, child-eating pothole at 83rd and Central Ave. in South L.A. (photo: sahra)

There are potholes and then there are POTHOLES.

Potholes that can send you headfirst over your handlebars.

Potholes that can destroy your rims.

Potholes that can consume small children.

Wait, what?

Yes, we discovered on the Central Ave. Experience Bike Ride on Sunday, some potholes are capable of eating small children.

When the carrier he was riding in hit the gigantic pothole at 83rd St., a 4 year old boy bounced out the back and onto the pavement. It happened so fast that the cyclists riding up from behind barely had enough time to swerve around him. One even ended up falling over him.

It is a terrifying thing seeing a small child silently staring up at you from underneath a bicycle.

“He doesn’t really cry,” his cousin told me as she scooped him up and we checked him over. Read more…

The future of South Figueroa at 11th Street? Doesn't seem far fetched now. Click on the image for a high-res copy.

The MyFigueroa team will be presenting all their images and renderings at the Andrew Norman Hall Orthopaedic Hospital at 5:30 pm on April 9th. Get the event details at the MyFigueroa website. Of course, we’ll be Live Streaming at Streetsblog TV. Bookmark our event page now.

It seems like just yesterday a team of Los Angeles’ most progressive planners and international planning rock stars from Gehl Architects unveiled some planning images showing how the rather bleak South Figueroa Corridor could be transformed into a complete street. While the public was “mostly positive,” it seemed a stretch that such a project would ever take place in Los Angeles.

In truth, it wasn’t yesterday. It was over two years ago. But despite some major hurdles, such as the minor issue of the dissolution of the Community Redevelopment Agency responsible for the project, the $20 million project should be completed on-time before the end of 2014.

The newly released images don’t look quite as dramatic as the ones shown a in 2011, but still promise bus only lanes, new transit waiting areas, fixed sidewalks, zebra crosswalks and the minor issue of separated bike lanes, proudly marked as “cycletracks” in MyFigueroa’s promotional materials.

“While our design still includes cycletracks on Fig, as we have always shown, we have more to share about the design of the entire corridor, and the multimodal components serving pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders,” writes Melani Smith, the president and principal of Melendrez Design Partners, the firm who has teh lead on the project. “We think there’s something in our design for all kinds of people using the streets.  Ultimately, we’re planning a corridor that is a safer, more comfortable place for people to be.”

The project isn’t just about improving Figueroa Street between 7th Street (in Downtown Los Angeles) and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard  (in South Los Angeles) by offering a full buffet of safe and comfortable transportation options. It also includes new streetscapes on 11th Street between Figueroa Street and Broadway and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard from Figueroa Street and Vermont Avenue.

“I am thrilled that the pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders in Downtown and South Los Angeles are benefactors of the 2006 State of California bond measure that provides funding for the implementation of new infrastructure,” writes Deborah Murphy of Deborah Murphy Urban Design + Planning, another project partner. “The MyFigueroa! project supports the development of new housing, particularly affordable housing, in dense transit-oriented urban neighborhoods.” Read more…