People

ROBERT GARCIA THINKS ABOUT COMMUNITY

You have variously described some of the goals of the Piggyback Yard as water detention, open space programming, and the connectors between parks and neighborhoods, I recommend in the strongest possible terms is that there also be a goal , a theme that explicitly talks about people – focusing on four areas: Jobs, Housing, Heath and Culture.

Jobs

Starting day one, there must be jobs, including green jobs, and youth jobs. And at every level there must be training: apprenticeships and union jobs, all kinds of training for the unemployed.

Housing & Gentrification

We need affordable and sustainable housing. I just came back from a round table in New Orleans, addressing social justice and Katrina five years after. There was a presentation on the revitalization of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, a fantastic project which is going great, but it’s also contributing to the “Manhattanization” of Brooklyn. Starbucks is moving in, the Manhattan Diaspora is moving in; and the people for whom they wanted to revitalize the park can no longer afford to live in the area.

Physical and Psychic Health

The proposed soccer fields and open spaces are places for physical activity and address physical health and obesity concerns. Social Science research shows that living in green areas is healthier. Physically-fit students do better academically; they stay in school longer.

Robert Garcia, Executive Director, Counsel and Founder, The City Project

ARTHUR GOLDING: WORKFORCE HOUSING IS CRITICAL

This site is one of the few opportunities to provide work-force housing in Los Angeles in proximity to two huge employment centers, the County USC Medical Center and the government center, – which are right across the river from each other.

If we think about the greatest concentration of government employees west of the Mississippi and we think about the hospital complex and all the people who work there, these are precisely the people who cannot afford to live proximate to work.

If you want to live in a sustainable city, one of the things you need to do is put housing close to jobs and allow people to move about without motorized transportation.

While I think the majority of the Piggyback Yard should be park, and I certainly want to see the river re-shaped on the edge of this park, housing is a critical integral, component part.

Arthur Golding, Arthur Golding and Associates

DAN ROSENFELD: “120 ACRES WITH ONE OWNER WILL NEVER EXIST ANYWHERE IN THE CITY AGAIN.”

Natural Open Space

Even though I’m a developer, my first choice is that the Piggyback Yard be natural open space. It’s so hard to assemble land in the flood plain of the River. 120 acres with one owner will never exist anywhere in this city again.

THE PROPOSED PBY PRESERVES KEY VIEWS OF DOWNTOWN AMIDST A VERDANT SETTING THAT FIGURATIVELY RECONNECTS ANGELENOS BOTH TO NATURE AND TO THEIR CITY.

Draw yourselves a 200 yard-400 yard zone around your bi flood detention basin and look at how you could up-zone and redevelop that area, because there should be development around it. Look at Central Park and the value of the adjoining properties being able to look over the park. But that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be some concessions in it, cultural and even economic. Again: look at Central Park.

We have the same issues in the Baldwin Hills, where as the oil drilling depletes, obviously we can allow it to develop for very, very high value uses; but the scarcity of parks and the scarcity of open spaces in this city would suggest that the base use would be something very green.

We struggled so hard to get the Chinatown Cornfield. Everybody had an idea of some kind of sympathetic development there that would nibble away at a piece of it – shopping centers, temples, and so on – but most people seem happy today that there’s 32 acres of open space. In the Taylor Yard, everything that’s encroached on it – whether it’s Federal Express, warehouse, or schools – has meant a loss of open space.

Dan Rosenfeld, Senior Deputy, LA County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas

DREAMING OF CULTURE & HISTORY MADE MANIFEST

Native American Sites

Robert Garcia: We all know of Native American sites along the River. It would be vital to celebrate their histories here. The best practice example for this is Crissy Field in San Francisco’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area. They have interpretative elements that explicitly say the National Parks Service worked with the Native American People to develop these interpretive elements. Doing something like this would take the Piggyback Yard’s focus on culture and history in the park to a whole higher level.

Linking Plaza de la Raza and the River

Arthur Golding: It would also be very, very interesting to see a park corridor that was also a water corridor and that linked Plaza de la Raza to the River. That would be phenomenal and would start to make the Environmental Justice argument to allow people on the east side to be better connected. The Piggyback Yard could be a perfect movement corridor – for bikes and hiking but also for commuting, moving through this Park Strip down to the River.

MISSION ROAD BECOMES A BUSTLING BOULEVARD WITH WIDE SIDEWALKS LINED WITH SHOPS, OFFICES AND APARTMENTS ABOVE, “CLEANTECH” INDUSTRIAL SPACES BEYOND, GREENED BY THE FINGERS OF THE PIGGYBACK YARD.

A Green Tech Corridor

Carol Armstrong: In terms of programming the site, you could highlight the kind of expertise that already exists in the area. One idea: a climate change center with people studying geothermal morphology next to people studying about modernizing the rail industry, automotive technology, all studying in the same place. It would become a kind of artistic center, where people are together, talking to one another, interacting like they never have before. That would be really, really cool.

A Piggyback University

Steve Brye: The Piggyback Yard could be the site of a University of California, East Los Angeles campus. Recent UC campuses are in isolated locations, whereas this site allows better access through its urban environment. This site would unite the Los Angeles River, Boyle Heights and downtown. The University would promote community-based research, a clean technology corridor, sustainability and transit use. Additionally, improving the L.A. River and wetlands would benefit the university and the city. The excellent Perkins & Will model need not change. Imagine a few different building labels and the dream emerges: The University of California, East L.A.