$6 Million Awarded for Pershing Square Job

A $6-million city grant for a major rebuilding of downtown Los Angeles’ historic Pershing Square park was approved Monday. Business leaders said the action will help them raise millions more from private sources.

The grant, approved by the Community Redevelopment Agency Commission, will be applied toward an ambitious $15-million to $18-million overhaul of the five-acre square, bordered by 5th, 6th, Hill and Olive streets.

Wayne Ratkovich, a developer and chairman of the Pershing Square Management Assn., a non-profit business group that is managing the project, called the grant the cornerstone of a “history-making” public-private partnership.

‘Strong Impetus’

He said the funds will be a “strong impetus” for a private fund-raising campaign expected to begin in the fall. Business officials hope to raise more than $4 million from corporate and large private donors. Several million dollars more would come from the city’s parks and public works departments and be raised through “grass-roots” fund-raising, possibly seeking sponsors for thousands of bricks that would be set in the park.

In recent years, the park, the city’s oldest, has been a magnet for derelicts and drug dealers and a growing thorn in the side of officials trying to create a new, cosmopolitan image for the Central City.

To attract more office workers and middle-class downtown residents to the park, a preliminary plan has been approved that calls for restaurants, performance areas, a large greenhouse, lush botanical landscaping and improved security, all to be completed by 1989.

Critics of the plan say it includes too much commercial activity and may force out the poor--charges that proponents of the project strongly deny. “It’s not about getting people out of the park,” said PSMA Director Janet Marie Smith. “It’s about getting other people into the park. . . It’s a shame that (the growing office work force) does not feel comfortable using the park and thus has been excluded.”

Though officials said the aim of sprucing up the park is not to keep anyone out, a number of street people were turned away from a luncheon held in the park to celebrate the event.

As business and city leaders gathered for speeches, security guards kept an eye on several dozen ragged spectators outside a roped-off area and quietly steered three or four away who to tried to enter.

CRA Commission Chairman Jim Wood later invited all onlookers to join in a catered lunch of sandwiches and fruit. When some of the street people stepped forth, however, they were confronted by Councilman Gilbert Lindsay and told that the food was for invited guests only. A PSMA spokeswoman assured Lindsay that everyone was invited, but the councilman persisted.

The guests ate, the street people looked on and then the leftovers were loaded up and taken away by the caterers. Afterward, Tommie Smith, a resident of the Skid Row missions and one of those turned away by Lindsay, said: “They don’t want us to come to the park unless everyone is dressed right.”

Then he hurried off. “I gotta go find me a soup line. (Watching) that made me hungry.”