Today’s Headlines

  • Daily Breeze Calls for City to Adopt Car-Share for City Employees 
  • Municipalities Swapping Measure R and Stimulus Funds (Times)
  • Most of California’s 31.5 Billion Stimulus Going to Plug Budget Shortfalls (Daily News)
  • California Looking for Public-Private Partnerships (Reuters)
  • Students Win 4-Way Stop for Hollywood School (City Watch)
  • Expo Station Will Replace Arts Center in Santa Monica (SMDP via LAist)
  • Yglesias: Expand Transit Capacity Before Gas Prices Rebound
  • Advocates Fight Oregon Proposal to Require Bicycle Registration (BikePortland via Streetsblog.net)
  • Metro: Runners, Don’t Drive to Pasadena Marathon (Star-News)

  • As a Santa Monica resident, I know there are other places in Santa Monica to have the arts center, such as the Airport and near Verizon. In this case, the station makes sense.

    I appreciate what the artists have done with Bergamont, but the greater good requires that they be relocated (assuming that site is actually satisfactory for Expo.)

  • The Bergamot Station art center is and should be a destination, and would compliment a station stop, not a replacement with a train yard. Besides being the most prominent art happening place on the West Side, it’s also home to commercial studios with lots of job opportunities. I know because I did some freelance work once at motion graphics house Brand New School, which is one of several big commercial studios in the complex. It’s long suffered a lack of adequate public transit options and a full parking lot on big opening nights, I saw the prospect of a train stop here as a perfect way to bridge a gap in the LA art scene. Trains should be connecting cultural places of interest, not replacing them. I too am a Santa Monica resident.

  • Fair enough, Gary, if a way can be found to do both.

    Santa Monica will benefit greatly by the Expo Line and will no doubt be expected to contribute to the upkeep of the line.

    Santa Monica probably won’t be able to pull a NIMBY and tell Metro to put the yard somewhere in Los Angeles instead.

  • I don’t know the details of the feasibility of different sites, but from the very beginning of my hearing of the Expo line I thought how great it would be for the Bergamot Art Center to be hooked up directly to transit. The place basically begs for a transit option with tons of car in the parking lot every day, and on opening nights people are stuffing cars into every available space including unused dirt space out behind the buildings. It’s a very popular space and a great opportunity for transit oriented development. I don’t think the notion of just replacing the center should be taken very lightly. For a lot people the place is a landmark destination.

  • The idea of Bergamot Station going away (or moving) is something that I would not be pleased with. This is very upsetting to me.

    Browne