About 1,000 industrial and warehouse jobs would return to downtown Los Angeles if a project proposed next to Chinatown moves forward. However, environmentalists and some neighborhood advocates are fighting the project because they say the area already has enough warehouses.
Developer Ed Roski Jr., who recently helped bring the Staples Center to downtown, proposes building a $60 million, 950,000-square-foot warehouse and industrial center called River Station. Roski's firm, Majestic Realty, wants to build the 32-acre warehouse and industrial center on a polluted former rail yard known locally as the Cornfield. Majestic is counting on a $1.2 million economic development incentive grant from the city, which would help pay for soil and groundwater cleanup. The grant is a pass-through of federal Housing and Urban Development funds earmarked for brownfields reuse. Majestic also has applied for a $10.5 million brownfields loan from HUD.
However, Friends of the Los Angeles River (FOLAR), the Environmental Defense Fund and some Chinatown groups are lobbying against the brownfields funding. They argue that Chinatown has more pressing needs than new industry.
"You basically have a community, the Chinatown community, that has no park and no school, and you have a proposal on that 32 acres of land that could provide those amenities," said Jan Chatten-Brown, attorney for FOLAR. "It doesn't seem like good planning and it seems like a disparate impact on a community of color."
City leaders, however, want the property to become an economic asset. The Cornfield (so named because kernels used to blow in from the nearby Capitol Milling plant and sprout on the site) lies within empowerment and enterprise zones, meaning businesses that locate there would be eligible for tax breaks. The Cornfield is zoned for industry, and the adopted Central City North Community Plan also calls for industrial use, said Hadar Plafkin, a city planner.
City officials and Majestic representatives note that the area near the Cornfield has remained economically depressed even as nearby areas flourished during the late 1990s. This is partly because distribution and supply companies have moved from downtown to East Los Angeles and the suburbs, said John Hunter, Majestic vice president.
"The city of Los Angeles needs manufacturing jobs, particularly in this area," he said. The Majestic proposal would clean up a contaminated rail yard that has become a dumping site, create jobs and provide tax revenue to the city, Hunter argued.
But attorneys for project opponents appear to be laying the groundwork for future lawsuits. They contend that the proposed mitigated negative declaration does not adequately address a number of issues and that an environmental impact report should be prepared. State Senator Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) also has requested an EIR that provides "a complete and thorough assessment of the presence of hazardous materials" and addresses potential aesthetic impacts on surrounding communities. Furthermore, the National Park Service has asked for an EIR because of the project could physically block the planned Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail and harm 18th Century historic sites.
But Plafkin, the city planner, said background material for the mitigated negative declaration is already the size of a small EIR and further study is unnecessary. Majestic's Hunter agreed.
"An EIR would reveal no new information regarding the property, it would only slow us down," Hunter said.
Opponents also are working to incorporate Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act into the planning process for the first time in Los Angeles. Robert Garcia, senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund, said that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act mandates that the city's land-use planning processes and HUD's method of awarding money must consider a development's impact on people of color.
Whether or not the city allows Majestic to build River Station, the trend of redeveloping old industrial sites in the Los Angeles area appears to be strong.
"You are seeing a lot of old, single-use industrial sites being cleaned up and reused as new industrial sites," said Larry Kosmont, a Southern California real estate consultant. "They are well-located in urban areas where large pieces of property are difficult to put together."
Elsewhere in Los Angeles, a closed General Motors factory is being redeveloped as a 100-acre industrial project, and a former Hughes missile plant is returning as a 70-acre technology and business park, Kosmont said. More projects are on the way because the demand for industrial space is strong and vacancy rates remain low, he said. Plus, companies are looking for more modern facilities than are commonly found in industrial centers in cities such as Los Angeles, Vernon and Commerce, he said.
However, because the old industrial sites typically are contaminated and have serious traffic constraints posed by deteriorating, narrow streets, government subsidies are necessary to make reuse possible, Kosmont said.
In many instances, environmental groups are happy to see federal brownfields funding clean up industrial pollution. But, with regard to the Cornfield, green organizations argue that the federal government should not subsidize Roski's industrial project. Instead, FOLAR has advanced a plan that calls for schools, parks and neighborhood commercial uses.
The city's zoning administrator is likely to make a decision on the level of environmental review and the project's merits early in 2000. The only entitlement Majestic has requested is a variance to eliminate 15-foot setbacks, said Plafkin.
As the popularity of motor sports, especially stock car racing, blossomed during the late 1990s and 2000s, a number of would-be race track developers and local government officials in California pursued high-speed economic dreams. However, actually building a race track in California has proven to be far more difficult than proposing a track and even winning development entitlements.
The City of Tulare has officially given up on a proposed speedway. The premature checkered flag for the Tulare Motor Sports Complex is hardly a surprise.
On the surface, auto racing tracks seem like a sexy way to generate big economic returns. Cities such as Indianapolis, Charlotte and Daytona Beach owe a good portion of their existence to auto racing. But these places are the exception, as numerous other cities have learned over the last decade.
Faced with rapidly declining revenues and extremely difficult budget choices, local governments are starting to invent their own economic stimulus programs. Cities have begun loaning money to car dealerships, cutting development fees, promoting buy-local programs and undertaking new redevelopment projects, among other things.
The City of Bell's plan to purchase property from the federal government and lease it to a railroad for use as a truck yard has been stalled and possibly killed by an environmental justice organization's successful California Environmental Quality Act lawsuit. The litigation has also raised questions about $35 million in bonds that the city issued in 2007 to fund property acquisition and improvements.
With an economy based on construction, shipping and warehousing, and heavy industry – and with some of the most conservative politics in the state – the Inland Empire would appear to be an unlikely place for a "green" movement. However, a public-private initiative is under way that seeks nothing less than a transformation of the region to one based on green technology and sustainable living.
Voters in the northern Solano County city of Dixon will decide in April on a project that could change the nature of town: A horse racing track and entertainment center capable of handling events for up to 50,000 people, plus more than 1 million square feet of hotel, entertainment, retail and office development.
Stanislaus County, the City of Patterson, and a North Carolina-based developer have teamed together on a business park that all parties hope will bring employment to an area that has seen rapid housing development but minimal job growth.
Despite a sluggish California economy, the state agency charged with business development and job creation appears to be in for a substantial downsizing.
An economic downturn that has forced up Bay Area unemployment and office vacancy rates shows little sign of abating. Business leaders, economic development experts and analysts say that righting the greater Bay Area's economic ship will be neither easy nor quick.
A collection of San Joaquin Valley water technology companies is attempting to make Fresno the center of the "flow technology" world. Representatives of dozens of companies have been meeting regularly for nearly two years as part of the Water Technology Industry Cluster in hopes of boosting business and improving the San Joaquin Valley's economic status.
Sutter County is once again pursing a major development near the Sacramento International Airport. A specific plan the county adopted earlier this year calls for a 3,500-acre industrial and commercial development that would be a job center for the region.
Three counties in the eastern Bay Area are in position to capitalize on a predicted boom in the biotechnology industry, according to a new report. Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano counties, in fact, could be in better position than other locales in the Bay Area to accommodate manufacturing and distribution of new biotech products.