If Not a Ballpark, Chavez Ravine Could Have Held a Lake
Artist: Don May / USC Digital Archives
[digarc.usc.edu]
This rendering shows a lake proposed for Chavez Ravine had courts ruled against the City's deal with the Dodgers in 1958.
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Even as the Dodgers played their first season in Los Angeles in 1958, a trio of lawsuits challenged the city's deal to give the team 315 acres in Chavez Ravine. Obviously, the courts ruled in favor of the Dodger deal. But if they hadn't, what then?
In October of 1958, Assemblyman Don Anderson appeared before City Council to propose a lake.
The city had taken the land earlier for a public housing project, and the suits challenged whether the Dodger deal violated the provision in the eminent domain rules that the land be used for "public purposes." On June 6, 1958, Pasadena Superior Judge Kenneth C. Newell issued a preliminary injunction blocking the sale. In July, another Superior Court judge invalidated several provisions of the contract, throwing the deal into doubt.
The uncertainty led Anderson to appear before Council to propose a lake and recreational area for the ravine. "I feel it imperative that some alternative plan be held in readiness," he told the Los Angeles Times. He presented the above rendering, telling Council that the lake could be used for water sports.
On January 13, 1959, though, the state Supreme Court approved the Chavez Ravine deal, allowing the sale to continue and putting an end to Anderson's lake proposal.
ubrayj02 on March 15, 2009, at 07:50AM – #1
I assume that this lake would have been filled with the tears of old widows and young children removed from the area to make way for progress?
BobbyD on October 30, 2010, at 08:39AM – #2
There was another possible lawsuit- by the Nature Conservancy who demanded that they be paid $1 million a year for managing a conservancy of the natural resources on the property, that conservancy had not been established. That is when the mayor asked to solve the problem in my usual way- plant trees on the property and then appear in court to say to the judge that he could not give the Nature Conservancy control of my personal property,the trees, to the Nature Conservancy because I was a minor. With only the plans and one little stake to measure from I planted the trees that are there, plus went up the hill,with those land owners' permission, in case the Nature Conservancy tried to cause trouble from the adjacent properties. When the trees started showing I went there with a LA police officer who had called a Nature Conservancy attorney to meet him there. When the Nature Conservancy attorney arrived there I pointed at some little tree plants and then at me- this particular person knew from prior experiences that there was no way they would get a million dollars a year. I laughed. The officer laughed, the dodgers have $50 million dollars now that would have gone to the Nature Conservancy for no work done.
BobbyD on December 17, 2010, at 11:13AM – #3
To ubrayj02: In the 1950s, when I finished planting the seeds for the tree that are now on the Dodger Stadium property, I went up to the houses on the hill overlooking the Dodger Stadium property and asked them if they wanted me to plant some plants hold the hillside to prevent landslides- those owners said to me that Chavez ravine had sides that were almost straight up and down with no people living there- the hole had been filled in over the years in preparation to use it for something. So, to you ubrayj02, I say You Are A Liar!