Thursday: Habeas Index Presents Discussion of Park 101

This freeway cap park is by far one of the best ideas I've heard for Downtown's future. It would be good in so many respects: some green stuff to offset the concrete and glass; a beautiful link between Chinatown and the rest of Downtown; and an ingenious way to hide the monstrosity that is a rush-hour traffic.

For those who support the Park 101 concept, shoot an email to Gail Goldberg and the LA planning department and let them know. I contacted them recently to express my excitement over this proposal. Let L.A planning know that we want this project.

"Ingenious"

"the monstrosity that is rush hour traffic"

O.K. folks, here's what this landscape architect thinks regards the new proposal/idea now kicking about: what is so ingenious about covering over a narrow freeway for a distance of half a mile where it is/will be bordered mostly by institutional developments set on long block lengths? Hey, this ain't downtown Boston! If the half mile of the 101 was lined by short blocks and by high rise offices, residences and lots of interesting commercial frontages at ground level, I could see the chance for eventual success. But as things stand, I feel that constructing a half mile long sold cap with a suburbanesque landscape on top would be naive, that it would end up becoming a linear Pershing Square refuge for society's outcasts. Just what the State Historic Park needs, right? There are more interesting and complex alternatives, as discussed on the previous thread.

As well, having a solid cap atop this narrow freeway would present safety issues, whether or not gasoline tanker trucks and hazardous material transports would be allowed to pass underneath. Personally, I would feel sort of paranoid being stuck in traffic in such a tunnel. A more complex solution geared for pedestrians as well as those driving along the 101 is more forward thinking, more 21st Century, rather than mid 20th Century - out of sight, out of mind. Forward thinking is better for the city's image.

Question: is the space underneath the former Children's Musuem a parking structure? I know that the parking beneath the L.A. City Mall has an emergency command center underneath. If the abandoned museum sits on-grade, what might happen there? The mall itself should be radically rethought and be integrated into this project (if it ever happens). But that one block, between L.A. Street and Main Street, might be the best place to have a solid cover over the freeway/southbound offramp. Nothing more. The other bridges should be widened to accommodate pedestrian promenades. It bears repeating: this issue ought to be pursued as an urban design problem. Simply seeing it as a landscape problem is extremely naive.

Artists, architects and imaginative engineers need to be involved, along with landscape enthusiasts.

I'm trying every which way I can to get rid of that Triforium.

Forgot one aspect: a high-techie pedestrian bridge between the High School of The Performing Arts and the plaza of the cathedral could be a spectacular eye-opener.

I don't think it's naive to want a green space on this stretch. I think it's naive not to expect some City department to approve it and then another nix it and build a police station instead (maybe another prison?). I agree that "artists, architects and imaginative engineers need to be involved, along with landscape enthusiasts." The problem with social outcasts is not that they flock to newly built parks, it's that they don't really have anywhere else to go. If I were living on the street, I'd rather sleep in a park than a dirty sidewalk. I'm aware this isn't Boston and I love Downtown. What's wrong with wanting a little bit of green? And, by the way, people cope with tunnels everywhere else in the world (even in Japan, another earthquake-prone place), so why not here? Maybe the problem lies in the absurd number of trucks that travel the freeway during the day.

Rather than a sixty story plus skyscraper north of the Music Center, why not a symbolic civic monument? A tribute to Simon Rodia as well? With that, perhaps Westsiders would visit Watts Towers for the first time, or more often.

I think that a whole lot of people were naive the day that the latest incarnation of Pershing Square opened to the public. I stood at the corner of 5th and Hill and looked across at all of those pink cylinders and it was quite apparent that the big boss who had run the show was saying &*%# you! to the east side of downtown, to stay the hell out. Even if they had had Madonna dancing naked every night at midnight, the place still would have gone to pot. So it is a bit of a measure of poetic justice that portions of the place now stink to the hilt.

If you cover half a mile of freeway with plants, Parks and Rec is just gonna love taking care of it all. And include a doggie run too? They'd best have a human run instead.

Yes, I'm sounding jaundiced on this cap idea. But you gotta have some perspective on how things get done in L.A. .. Moreover, how things usually turn out, despite innocent intentions. The big boss on Pershing Square wasn't so innocent though....

I understand and share your cynicism when it comes to public development Downtown and I know the City's good at making empty promises, but I think this is a feasible, low-cost, low-impact solution for that particular corridor. You can't really build anything on top of a cap without some structural re-engineering. You need foundations to erect most urban buildings. Tinkering with the foundations would involve reinforcing the tunnel or moving the freeway deeper, which would disrupt traffic for a while and I don't see that happening any time soon. A cap strong enough to withstand a crowd and flexible enough to survive an earthquake sounds doable. Plus, with construction entering an uncertain phase, public money for a park seems more within reach than private money for more condos and retail. I'd like to hear more about the cap proposal.

The most popular 'take' regards the distant L.A. future can be seen in the movie Blade Runner. Yes, it is quite bleak, but it could only result from a totalitarian form of government being imposed upon us - i.e., Bush's wet dream of Chevron-Mobil-Standard-Texaco omnipotence.

Instead, why couldn't one drive along the 101 conducting out of town visitors on a tour of downtown and it would be a setting diametrically opposite Ridley Scott's dystopia. Imagine how it could be half a century from now. Does anyone remember Gehry's horse's head maquette exhibited at the Gagosian Gallery near ten years ago? That sculpture soon came to fruition as the centerpiece of a dazzling multi-use project next to the Brandenberg Gate in Berlin. Why not an angel's head where the former Children's Museum now sits? Why not semi-pyramidal or semi-spherical or more inordinately shaped spaceframes arching over the freeway, with greenery draping ten, twenty or thirty feet downwards? Or a glass-bottomed aquarium spanning the gap, so that motorists stuck in traffic can look up at specimen size shark, tuna and stingray. Yes, of course the glass would have to be bullet proof and earthquake proof. We don't want a man eating Great White to fall into Paris' lap now, do we? And we still need a history museum for the city of Los Angeles. How could that be fit in? Just call Frank, I say.

Finally, plant as many Jacaranda trees as possible. It would be a rhapsody in blue every month of June.

Yeah, I'd rather drive or be driven through "a massive playground of wild invention," rather than a half mile tunnel. We need a sense of place along the transitory experience of daily life. Beam me down, Scotty!

Please visit www.park101.org to show your support for the project, thanks