South LA

When Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas' motions to make the Crenshaw Light Rail project run entirely below-grade and to construct a station at Leimert Park both failed, the Board Member promised he would be back with a new motion to improve the project in a different way. At last week's Metro Board Meeting, Ridley-Thomas introduced a motion calling for community benefits during construction of the Expo Line.

Leimert Park from Mark Ridley-Thomas on Vimeo.

A motion by County Supervisor and Metro Board Member Mark Ridley-Thomas would grade-separate the planned Crenshaw Light Rail Line for twelve blocks from 48th Street to 59th Street along the Crenshaw Corridor and would require the construction of a station at Leimert Park.  Both grade-separating the Crenshaw Line and the Leimert Park Station are listed as "optional" in Metro's most recent corridor studies.  To pay for the grade-separation and new station, Ridley-Thomas asks Metro to identify funding sources "including but not limited to" Measure R funds for the Expo Line and for the Green Line to LAX, the Arbor-Vitae interchange project and sales of "surplus property" along the right-of-way that won't be used.  The Crenshaw Line will run below-grade for the rest of the route along Crenshaw Boulevard.

A standing room only audience descended on the Fashion Institute of Design on South Grand Street to listen to a presentation from the embattled Community Redevelopment Agency for a ground breaking and popular proposal to transform the South Figueroa Corridor.  When people discuss Los Angeles' streets, they usually use terms such as "car-oriented" or "ugly."  The new South Figueroa, aka My Figueroa, would be a truly beautiful street designed for people to walk, bike wait for transit or just enjoy life outside as well as a way to shuffle cars from one area to another.

Making Cities for People, the official blog of Copenhagen super-architects Gehl Architects, gives us another look at the Figueroa Corridor as it is and as it could be in South Los Angeles. The above image shows how our city's lifeblood is literally being drained away by the collective demand for car parking. Even Gehl's team, which has worked on street projects around the world, seems taken aback by the over-abundance of car parking offered in Los Angeles.

I have to be honest.  If the My Figueroa project ends up fulfilling its mission of designing a people-friendly Figueroa Street from the southwest corner of Exposition Park to Downtown Los Angeles only by adding a couple of trees and repainting the crosswalks, I'll be extremely disappointed.

Last week, at a packed meeting of the City of Los Angeles Planning Commission, the Commission punted on a proposed $250-million residential development known as the Lorenzo.  The developer, Geoffery Palmer of Palmer Construction, is known for his other Italian-themed apartment developments Medici, Visconti, Orsini and Piero.