I announced this at last nights Highland Park Neiborhood Council meeting and got a few folks interested in stopping this development from happening here. I remember MBS saying at a meeting sometime ago that they were going to apply for entering into ‘formal negotiation with the City some time in September. I don’t know what this means. But I’d like to get a formal ’stop this development’ campaign going on before they can go further. It reads like a few of you feel the same way. Let’s unite.

HP Resident: If you want a Starbucks, move to South Pasadena. Lower- and middle-income Angelenos are the backbone of this city’s economy, and we deserve a neighborhood we can afford to live and shop in.

With all due respects. Romero

Sincerely, a pissed off Chicano

Brohammed pretty well summed it up. The meeting was set up with these stations, with big post-it-note boards where we as the community were supposed to go up and give input. That wasn’t good enough for the community, so the community hijacked the thing, set up chairs and started firing off questions. Poor flustered MBS.

The short older guy was Milofsky of http://www.m2a-architects.com/ …he was there in the capacity of talkin’ scale, massing and other architectural whatnot. When I asked him about how they needed one-hundred-one units+ to get their State funding, he defended with a sort of “I’m just following orders” and “it’ll have to go through your HPOZ so don’t worry about a thing” argument.

Anyway, I was glad to hear that the project was at such an early stage of development, and that the community-at-large made it loud and clear that a four-story building was not welcome. Whether that’s worth something to the outcome of all this I don’t know.

One thing I took away that I liked is that, as a McCormack Baron Salazar project, this project would be under the management of McCormack Baron Ragan, who I’m assured (by MBS, anyway) do things like go out and paint over graffiti as soon as it goes up, among other worthwhile managerial activities. More investigation into MBR may be in order.

There was one big piece of paper on the side wall for comments of all stripes, which expressed stuff like “make housing affordable” and “save Mr. T’s parking!” – what I found interesting were the ones that said “no Disney-style old-style contextualizing!” and “make it look modern!”…not the sentiments I would express, but I was glad people turned out to express them.

One member of the community asked an MBS’r “is there a website or something where we can contribute further?” and the guy up front looked pretty taken aback. “Uh…we can’t just put up a website for every project we’re developing!” he shot back.

So I went home and bought the rights to highlandparktransitvillage.com and at some point in the near future it’ll be a place where all available images of the site, and renderings by developers, will live, and there’ll be a forum like this dedicated to related discussion…

The meeting last night was pretty informal. They just had a few stations set up with a few different guys from the architects’ office explaining the project to the general public. I asked all 3 guys similar questions, and got different answers from each. 2 of the 3 guys were nice, the other one (the short older guy) came across as a bit of a defensive prick. For example, one guy told me that the current renderings were totally hypothetical and not at all representative of what the final project might look like, while another guy said that they are pretty much what it will be like, and the 3rd (defensive) guy just emphasized that there will be 100 units and that was it.

In short, here are some of things I took away from the meeting:

–The current renderings are “more or less” just a tentative starting point. While there will be at least 100 units, the actual design is still being finalized, hence the meeting to get community input.

–Of the 100+ units, about 60 will be affordable rentals. The remaining ones will be marketpriced sales.

–Parking: they were a bit nebulous on this one. Supposedly, they will replace all of the current parking spaces underground, but they weren’t clear about whether this is in addition to the added parking for the units theyre building. Seemed a bit shady on this one.

–There are currently *no plans* for retail, but they are open to it if the community wants it. I guess it will still be “mixed use”, but the “mixed” part will be community projects. For example, they are thinking of dedicating 10,000 sq ft to college space for some community college extension. Other ideas are a police substation, and a museum or community space of some sort.

–The whole project is in the very early stages of development, hence this informal meeting to get some initial community feedback. They had a sign up sheet to inform people of future meetings/events, of which they assured us there would be plenty

–They are also doing a bus tour this weekend of other projects theyve done, in Boyle Heights and Hollywood. It leaves at 9am from the parking lot at Ave. 57 & Marmion…. to RSVP you can call Claudia Ramirez at 213-236-2660 or email claudia.ramirez@mccormackbaron.com

Thats about it.

Additionally, there is no guarantee that these residents will be spending their money in their new neighborhood. Who will own the apartment complex(es) and where will this rent money go? Will this rent money stay in our neighborhood? I doubt it.

I agree the aesthetic of my neighborhood is important and a 4 story apartment/condo complex and its resulting increased traffic, trash and unbiodegradables will only spoil.

There are enough loft developments downtown and another one is not needed in Highland Park.

No, no, I’ll be on my best behavior, all tweed elbow patches and thoughtful nods.

And high-end retail, yes, great. I still think that’s magical thinking. While we’re at it, I’d like this development to be covered in redwood shingle, its floors in quarter-sawn white oak (I’ll settle for the residential paneling in old-growth douglas fir) though the library and music rooms should be in Atchafalaya cypress and bird’s-eye maple, respectively. And yes, the retail should have a first-rate cheese shop, and an actual record store, an independent book store, and a place that sells architectural salvage. But that’s just me.

I DO like the part about the “college floor campus.” Though kids today are “schooled” in holding pens, and don’t get me started on the LAUSD, education is the only way out of whatever mess it is we’re in, in my humble opinion. Plus young people have lots of disposable income which they’ll spend at all this retail we keep talking about (I foresee a video arcade and very loud pizza hangout in our future).

One-half of Los Angeles are immigrants, one-third of whose adults have not finished high school, and 60% do not speak English. As such, Ernesto Cortes Jr., director of the Industrial Areas Foundation said last weekend “The question is: Are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an elite group on top and the majority at poverty or near poverty wages? Right now we’re headed toward becoming a Third World city. But we can change that.”

I think it’s exactly this kind of project that has failed people on both sides of the class spectrum. Sure I can quote hundreds of examples, but then, this project is going IN, so all I can have is hope against hope. So I will, and perhaps it’s better to stick to deliberating over architectural details than theories on societal betterment.

This is the new HP and we deserve it? Jeez, what did we DO?

This is the new HP and we deserve it.

Comment 27 hit the nail on the head. How is it that retail in a new building, just because, what, it’s outgassing CFCs, will magically attract dollars? Who here remembers when Figueroa had that all that façade renovation, only to have the living bejeezus tagged out of it immediately afterward? Not that Fig doesn’t look better. It does. Not that it’s not coming up, it is. But despite LA’s murder rate going down, ours is going up. And I stand by my contention about high density.

HP is replete with commercial development that caters to the working poor because that’s what we by and large have here. Will the burgeoning screenwriter-iBook crowd who bought their houses in HP at $200/sf make Crate & Barrel Corporate scream “look at this new building! Highland Park is the future!” I have my doubts.

And in response to comment 17, consider the condo development on Ave 53. 400k apiece and they’re in foreclosure. (I might add that the Powers That Be as mentioned in comment 18 bent over backwards to give them extra units [above and beyond legal zoning] just because there was a train stop nearby—and now there’ll be no parking at the train stop.) Now, again, this development is largely not market rate, but under County jurisdiction of the Housing Authority (they’re in Monterey Park, call ‘em). This means property taxes go up to build this, and property taxes go up to shelter these residents. (I’m not saying this to be snarky, in fact, it doesn’t even effect me, since I’m Mills Act. I’m just pointing out the What’s What.) Couldn’t we rehab the untold number of extant structures suffering neglect from criminally absentee landlords?

This is not the Upper East side, like in comment 13, and it is not Nuevo Leon, a la comment 31—I see the point, but these are specious arguments. This is the Here and Now. And if, as Jason says, this is going in no matter what—such is any battle with the City in cahoots with developers, in exchange for our tax dollars—I guess, yes, it’s all about community involvement for the possible, a cynic might say improbable, but I’ll go ahead and say possible betterment.

Oh yeah, and I have to respond to comment 22. I do love my car, and the oasis of the parking lots, and yes, it’s quite bittersweet. I guess I’m the comical archetypal Angeleno in that respect. At least my car is twelve years old and gets good mileage. And I don’t drive to work. But I do drive all over Los Angeles, just looking at it (and taking a lot of pictures), so man, please trust me when I say I know exactly where Highland Park can go, both good and bad.

If I talk about Highland Park like it’s Beverly Hills it’s because I have pride…overweening pride…hubris even. I won’t even get into the chain store argument—suffice it to say when I choose Taco Bell over La Estrella, then I’ll throw in my two cents.

Some of you talk about Highland Park like it’s Beverly Hills and you can’t tolerate even the thought of having a chain store in the boundries of your HPOZ. Get over yourselves. You are already swiming in chain stores. Let’s at least get a Starbuck in the retail mix and if the developers can do that for us, they I support them. If they can’t do that for us, then someone else will.

And yes, having a Starbucks is proof that we are, after so many depressed and crime ridden years, good enough or at least as good as the rest of LA.
I’d love to see that happen and have already invited company reps to tour the area for possible retail locations.