INSIDE INGLEWOOD - Inglewood mayor James T. Butts rushed to two Metro meetings in late June. He went on the record to discuss a 30-foot wall Metro will be building at the La Brea/Florence station on the Crenshaw Line.
The mayor apparently learned of the wall after a Chronicle staffer’s call earlier in the week requesting comment.
Butts did not return the call. But he was at the June 20 Metro Construction Committee Meeting and again at the Metro Board Meeting on June 27.
At the June 20 meeting, the mayor commented on the wall as mentioned in Item 53 of the committee’s agenda
“Please keep in mind that we intend to have a project at the Florence and Market site. We call it D-3. It used to be a Cadillac dealership. We plan to have something like a hotel there,” he said.
The committee motioned to pass Item 53 on to the Metro Board without recommendation.
The wall, which had been in Metro’s Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) since 2011, is mentioned as being a “screen wall” that is required to be “minimum 6 [feet]” in height.
Unlike the pleasant aesthetic that greets metro Gold and Red Line passengers disembarking in Hollywood, downtown and Pasadena, straphangers who exit in Inglewood will be immediately greeted by a 30-foot wall that blocks the nearby meat-packing plant’s exhaust vents. When they exit the station they will be jettisoned onto a barren strip of Florence facing a lot near city hall that has been neglected for many years. (The photo above shows an aerial view of the meat-packing plan and dirt trench where Metro has cemented plans to build the La Brea/Florence station and a 30-foot wall that will divide Inglewood Districts 1 and 2.)
The June meetings’ agendas can be found here.
The June 20 audio transcription can be heard here.
The June 27 meeting may be found here. (The June 27 meeting is in three parts, and this is the third part. It regards “Item 53.”)
The item and its 30-foot wall was hurriedly approved despite the many objections.
(Randall Fleming is a veteran journalist and magazine publisher. He has worked at and for the New York Post, the Brooklyn Spectator and the Los Feliz Ledger. He is currently editor-in-chief at the Morningside Park Chronicle, a monthly newspaper based in Inglewood, CA and on-line at www.MorningsideParkChronicle.com)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 56
Pub: July 12, 2013