PHOTOS: Amsterdam on carfree.com
We have heard enough news from Europe in these past few weeks to understand that their society is not utopian. Cradle to grave welfare and subsidized health insurance are buckling under the weight of aging societies and declining birth rates. The Islamic revival in Europe is neither religious nor a revival but fascism under a new banner. Yet even in the tense and crowded landscape of the Old World, there are architectural and transportation forms to admire. And even wonder if they might be transplanted to Los Angeles……
THE SMALL PARK
Why do parks in Los Angeles have to be so huge? Griffith Park is enormous, and Balboa Park in the SF Valley is oversized and amorphous. In European cities, one often sees small green spaces surrounded by low rise apartments. Why can’t Van Nuys have some small parks with five story townhomes on all four sides? As Jane Jacobs once explained, parks are successful not based on what they are, but what is around them. If you put them in the midst of freeways surrounded by industry, how can that park be a pleasant place? Think of how LA destroyed many of the nicest parks in the Valley when the 170 rammed its hideous concrete through the green spaces in the early 1960s. Some of the monstrous parking lots along Sherman Way or along the perimeter of Valley College might serve as pocket parks with townhouses and pedestrian oriented uses around them.
CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE
The proportions of some of our new buildings are crude and splattered with plastic ornament. Geometry, balance, context, elegance…they are absent in about 90% of LA’s new ‘condos’. A drive around the Valley is a horror show of cinderblock stucco palaces perched atop parking garages with $29 Home Depot lights. Why are new buildings so mediocre? Quality has been replaced by “luxury” but what luxury is there without integrity? Observing how Europe built and continues to build could instruct Americans who are still overflowing with (to quote Mencken) a “libido for ugliness”.
BIKING TO WORK
The Busway is a fantastic step ahead in our thinking because it integrates landscaping, public transportation and the bike lane. There should be even more protected bike lanes around Los Angeles that are shielded from vehicular traffic. A painted line on the side of a ten lane boulevard is not a safe place to bike.
One radical idea would be to convert the aged 110 freeway from South Pasadena to Downtown LA to a permanent bike route. The highway is unsafe for cars with its outmoded design, but it is perfectly suited to bike riders because of its relatively short length and thrilling curves.
MINI MALL APARTMENTS
The pock marked, cancerous clone “mini-mall” has disfigured this city for the last 25 years with garish signs, too few parking spaces and the disappearance of the “street wall”. These one story, plastic signed atrocities should be torn down and replaced with five-ten story corner apartment buildings with underground parking and pedestrian sidewalk retail activity.
THE AMBASSADOR
Last month, they tore down a historic landmark, one of the oldest and loveliest hotels in the United States. It represented the last vestige of a gracious and dignified city. One that lived a balance between work and leisure, where people dressed up for dancing and dining.
Imagine if Paris knocked down the Hotel de Crillon or London leveled The Dorchester. Great cities preserve great buildings.
The Ambassador was shut down for many years, but the impoverished city of Geffen, Cruise, Spielberg and Hanks (director of “That Thing You Do”, filmed at the late hotel) could have pulled $200 million dollars together to refurbish and preserve it for posterity. There were other places to build a new school. It didn’t require the demolition of a beloved landmark.
We can tell ourselves that the world envies our nation, but maybe they are just watching us in amazement: fools dancing ourselves to death in pursuit of nothing.
Here in Van Nuys 
Jzy, the bureaucrats in this case may have been arrogant, but they were not wrong procedurally.
The Conservancy knows a lot about historic preservation, but did not lobby effectively or understand procurement procedures. It brought out its plan too late.
The Conservancy’s plan would have saved much of the Ambassador’s structure (save for the interior walls) and readapted them to school use. It was a very good plan. The problem is that LAUSD was executing a build action. The Conservancy had to get it into the study phase, which was years before. It also had ample opportunity, considering the site was in limbo for 15 years.
Would considering the Conservancy’s idea to renovate the Ambassador been a big deal? Yes. A very big one.
The LAUSD had already spent millions to study what should be done with the property. That’s the first step before construction can proceed. This only determines what the agency does next. After approving the alternative, it then must do a similar study on how that plan should be executed. This is the design phase. Once a design is accepted, then it goes to the build phase. This is where the construction contracts are issued.
Each of these steps is very time consuming and very expensive. LAUSD was already on the third step; giving the Conservancy’s plans credence this late meant they would have to stop everything and start over from square one. That would have been fiscally prohibitive and would have prevented a school from being built for another 5-10 years.
This was horrible for the district’s already low public relations image. It didn’t even defend its actions, even when it was right to reject the plan, but LAUSD looked so oblivious to the Conservancy (and to L.A.) that it might as well have read “My Pet Goat” to grade-schoolers.
Here’s how LAUSD would have come out of this matter looking marginally better. Tell the Conservancy that, sorry, but the Ambassador is a lost cause. It has important historical value, but one that cannot be weighted against the need to provide education in a crowded district. However, the Conservancy raises an important issue of historic preservation, and LAUSD will cooperate with members in finding future sites that can be both educational and historic. We will work to preserve historic sites and adapting them to school use.
But, LAUSD doesn’t even do this. It just alienated a constituency that could have been a great ally.
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Incompetent and arrogant bureaucrats such as those have cost us dearly. I feel anguished.
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Andrew wrote:
“One radical idea would be to convert the aged 110 freeway from South Pasadena to Downtown LA to a permanent bike route.”
Radical is to do something never tried before. That idea is reactionary, to return it to a previous state. The 110 north of downtown used to be exactly what you describe. It was a giant bike freeway, later co-opted for cars.
You’d have to get much of L.A. County behind this idea. Otherwise, an alternative would be to have a bike path paralleling the Gold Line from Lincoln Heights to Del Mar stations.
“The Ambassador was shut down for many years, but the impoverished city of Geffen, Cruise, Spielberg and Hanks … could have pulled $200 million dollars together to refurbish and preserve it for posterity. There were other places to build a new school. It didn’t require the demolition of a beloved landmark.”
The Ambassador’s in my neck of the woods, and believe me, Koreatown needs a school. Several, in fact. But, you’re right, it did not have to be demolished.
The Los Angeles Conservancy came up with a brilliant plan to adapt a school into the structure. The outside would have stayed the same, but many of the walls inside would have been knocked down for classrooms. It would have been the Ambassador as we have known and loved it, and also functional. The fault lies in with LAUSD, which coldly put the Conservancy’s plan in the circular file. This was a plan that the Conservancy researched well, even getting pro-bono input from archiects. That was low.
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