WHO
WE ARE-What God hath created let no man – except Tom LaBonge – destroy.
For a man who so loquaciously vouches for his love of LA and especially Griffith Park, LaBonge has a funny way of showing it.
For years now, LaBonge has targeted the nation’s largest urban park and only urban wilderness park for commercialization as a sort of Disneyland with trees and mountains – something that he is said to have wanted to achieve all his life as a so-called public servant.
In 2005, the master destroyer got the Recreation and Parks Department to develop a Master Plan for Griffith Park that infuriated just about everyone. As the Sierra Club described it:
“The draft contained numerous projects including aerial tramways, multi-story parking facilities, an 'eco hotel,' a 'Pleasure Pier' across the LA River, relocation of the merry-go-round, and ball fields on the Toyon Vista landfill. There was an immediate public outcry against the draft because of these proposed projects, which had never been considered in the earlier public meetings.
“Hikers in particular were offended by language in the draft that blamed them for erosion in the park.
“The draft recommends that 'all unofficial trails should be closed and the closures enforced.' The draft also contains a map of 'official trails' that leaves out dozens of trails that hikers have used for decades.”
Back to the drawing boards, LaBonge was forced to put together a “working group” from various communities of interest for and against park development, a move that would eventually allow him to come up with a new plan that got parks commission approval in April and the unanimous approval of the City Council last month.
It allows for the piecemeal development of the park starting with putting a band shell for a performing arts center at the old zoo site with its nature trails and wildlife corridor and destruction of the nearby Crystal Springs area used by thousands of families for picnics, weddings and other events so the land can be used for two Little League baseball fields with dozens of heritage trees removed and the picnic area moved to a small area.
Two weeks after the Parks Commission approval, an article on exploring the city in the LA Times carried the headline “Griffith Park’s charming surprises are just steps away” and reported:
“Here at the Crystal Springs Picnic Area, you will find the remnants of the old Griffith Park Zoo, which opened in 1912 with a collection of only 15 animals and closed in 1966 to make way for the current animal park. Still in place are many of the original pens, cages and service buildings. This green space is also home to outdoor Shakespeare performances and classical music concerts in the summer.”
The department’s own environmental report intended to whitewash all issues still noted this: “No feasible mitigation measures were identified that would both address resulting impacts on aesthetics and meet the project objectives; there significant impacts to aesthetics would be adverse and unavoidable. The project would also result in cumulative impacts related to historic, archaeological and paleontological resources.”
None of that fazed the Los Feliz or other Neighborhood Councils in the area – not the “removal” of two-thirds of the 67 mature trees at Crystal Springs, including heritage trees as black walnuts, live oaks and California sycamores.
That, and similar actions by NCs everywhere, tells you just how the reform that was supposed to empower the people has become just another tool of City Hall’s to crush all opposition and justify its actions.
Who needs trees, even legally protected trees, and open spaces for kids to run free in and explore nature along nearby trails with their families when we can get them into organized sports with a private organization like Little League?
There is so much wrong with this as Friends of Griffith Park and other environmental and community groups have argued for years.
They have won delays, forced revisions and now are left with the only tools citizens have when facing the City Hall – protest to deaf ears and sue in court over the dozens of things in the record the city ignored like the failure to look at alternative nearby sites for ball fields or seriously consider the massive influx of traffic and congestion.
The protests start Saturday at 10 a.m. at the oldest and most beautiful tree at Crystal Springs – a sycamore that dates back some 200 years old when Native Americans still roamed the wilderness without destroying it.
“Save the Sycamore” is the event’s slogan since the tree is doomed if this plan goes forward.
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“This is just the first step in what they plan to do,” said Marian Dodge, a long-time community activist and director of Friends of Griffith Park. “They plan to carry out their vision and commercialize the park one piece at a time.”
It is also just the first step in the fight to preserve what’s left of the park that mining-real estate millionaire Griffith Jenkins Griffith gave to the city 118 years ago, a few years before he shot his wife in the head and did a year in jail and before he donated the money for the observatory and the Greek Theater.
"It must be made a place of rest and relaxation for the masses, a resort for the rank and file, for the plain people," Griffith said when donating the land. "I consider it my obligation to make Los Angeles a happy, cleaner, and finer city. I wish to pay my debt of duty in this way to the community in which I have prospered.”
The "broad spaces and mighty distances" Griffith thought so necessary for everyone equally is what this is about.
Already, the Autry, zoo, golf courses and so much other development has eaten away at the “broad spaces and mighty distances” Griffith thought so important.
But instead of maintaining and repairing what already is in place to serve the public better, the city wants more development, more corporations coughing up money to build entertainment and recreational facilities, more commercialization – and less and less space for people to roam free and connect with nature on their own terms.
All over the city, wherever developers think they can make money with the help of taxpayer subsidies, the quality of life is being destroyed, usually with the support of segments of the community that fear even worse things will happen or by commercial and political interests that have corrupted Neighborhood Councils just as they corrupted the City Council.
Personally, I don’t see how anything can change until the bills come due in a calamity that as usual will hurt the most vulnerable – the people City Hall says it cares about so deeply even as it subjects them to misery.
But maybe the battle for Griffith Park is LA’s one last chance.
If you won’t stand up and do something to defend this wonderland, you will never do anything that matters in the life of this city or even to protect your little piece of it.
Friends of Griffith Park and the Griffith J. Griffith Trust will get the movement rolling on Saturday but it is going to take people all over the city coming together and organizing and confronting city officials everywhere.
It could be the turning point or just another chapter in the decline of Los Angeles. It’s up to you.
(Ron Kaye is a lifetime journalist, writer and political observer. He is the former editor of the Daily News and the founder of the Saving LA Project. He writes occasionally for CityWatch and can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 74
Pub: Sep 12, 2014