A ‘green’ industrial belt should run through it

For more than a generation, great cities in the American West have sought to repossess, regain or even re-create the rivers that run through them. San Antonio vaunts its 60-year-old Riverwalk as Texas’ foremost tourist attraction. Dallas takes pride in the Trinity River it has reclaimed as a chain of lakes and greenbelt. And Denver has its South Platte River Initiative.

Los Angeles wants its river back too, and decades-long restoration efforts are underway. If and when a people-friendly Los Angeles River emerges from its concrete flood-control coffin, it would be our city’s greatest work of collective imagination.

Ideally, most of us would probably prefer a belt of parks, bike paths, nature havens and athletic fields stretching from the river’s headwaters in the west San Fernando Valley to its outlet in Long Beach. But L.A.’s population is growing, and the city needs to build more affordable housing and create new jobs.

Which raises the question of what kind of development should take place on the river’s vital downtown banks between Chinatown to the north and Washington Boulevard to the south, where much of the land is industrially zoned. Many pro-river activists and environmentalists want the railroads, junkyards and factories that currently border the river to be replaced by a greenbelt, along with some housing and low-rise office and retail buildings.

The City Council and the Community Redevelopment Agency have a different idea for the L.A. River’s downtown west bank. They want to create a green Silicon Valley along the river from Main Street to Washington Boulevard, where a new generation of environmentally friendly industries would develop and manufacture renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind power. The proposal has the support of the council members -- Jan Perry, Jose Huizar and Ed Reyes -- whose districts would most directly benefit from it, and that means the remainder of the council is unlikely to oppose it

But here’s the problem. The Los Angeles River Revival Master Plan, which identifies 239 improvement projects along a 32-mile stretch of the waterway at a cost of $2 billion over 20 years, was adopted last year after 18 months of public hearings and meetings in the affected communities. By contrast, the idea of a green industrial belt, which would include some affordable housing and recreation facilities, has hardly been publicly discussed at all. That, unfortunately, may slow progress on an ambitious and worthwhile idea.

Lewis McAdams, the downtown poet-activist most responsible for the movement to revive the L.A. River, is among those highly critical of the lack of community input so far. “They [the CRA] told us and we listened,” he said, referring to the activists and residents who attended a public meeting on the proposal.

McAdams objects to encouraging any industrial growth in an area where “the buildings are worth four times as much for housing as for manufacturing. [Los Angeles] must be the only major city in the world trying to revive factories in its core.” He wants to see more community input.

Right now, the entire proposal “is more of an idea than a plan,” Cecilia Estolano, the CRA’s general manager, told me. “We’ve been working on [the idea] pretty intensely with local business organizations and local universities,” among them UCLA, USC and Caltech. She believes that scientific talent at these and other local schools would be attracted to the new tech ghetto.

The 19-acre tract on which the green industrial belt would be built was just acquired from the state of California for $14 million. Originally owned by Crown Coach, a builder of school buses, the land was supposed to be a site for a state prison, which was never built because of community protests. Thoroughly cleansed of toxics, it is now ready to receive one or more anchor tenants.

Estolano believes that if the new companies are successful, it will cause a “ripple effect” that will attract additional ecologically friendly assembly and manufacturing jobs to the area. The site would also house a 5,000- to 10,000-square-foot high-tech building in which innovative small enterprises could get a start. She notes that downtown industrial development is an option mentioned in the River Master Plan.

Choosing the right tenant won’t be easy because environment-friendly products don’t always result from environment-friendly manufacturing. For instance, the manufacture of solar panels produces toxic waste. Estolano says that a framework to evaluate the economics and environmental effects of the choices is being drawn up by the CRA and city officials. The green industrial belt must be self-sustaining in that no city subsidies would be involved, she said. Its individual developments would have to be approved by the City Council.

It won’t be as easy as making socks or marmalade, but for Huizar, who represents most of the Eastside, making “green” socks or marmalade would be OK too. He notes that clothing and food production are already well-established in his 14th District. “It’s a natural location for green-collar jobs,” he told me, because of its access to freeway and rail. Huizar and Reyes, driving forces behind the successes of the river-centered Cornfields and Taylor Yards park and recreation facilities upstream, want to see development on both sides of the waterway that would produce jobs for residents on the Eastside. Huizar particularly wants the old Crown Coach property to directly benefit the surrounding community because the 1984 victory in killing the prison proposal was a milestone of Latino power in the city.

Too bad the CRA is not reaching out and publicizing the advantages that would accrue to the neighborhood and to the larger community if a green industrial belt were built adjacent to the L.A. River.

Marc B. Haefele is a commentator for KPCC-FM (89.3) and writes for Citybeat, Citywatch and Nomada magazine of Buenos Aires.