LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN
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NEWS Volume 42, Number 18
EBRATING EL
May 6, 2013
YEARS
Since 1972
A Big Brewery Battle
Celebrate Mother’s Day
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RACE THIS WAY Urban Adventure/Scavenger Hunt Finds Plenty of Clues and Competitors in Downtown
photos by Gary Leonard
Contestants scrambled across Little Tokyo on April 27 searching for clues and solving puzzles as part of CityRace, an adventure/scavenger hunt organized by John Hennessy. by RichaRd Guzmán city editoR
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ery few fans of the CBS show “Amazing Race” ever get the chance to compete in the adventurous globetrotting competition. In addition to the difficulty in getting selected, aspirants need to give up weeks of their lives. By contrast, anyone with $40-$95, at least one friend and a few spare hours on the weekend can have a pretty good facsimile of the experience. Even better, one can do it all in Los
Angeles, and often in Downtown. The opportunity comes courtesy of John Hennessy, who for the past nine years has been staging his urban adventure/scavenger hunts called Race/LA and CityRace. The local competitions are inspired by the CBS show. “I was a big fan of ‘Amazing Race,’ and I thought it would be really cool if you could to do something like this in L.A. that you could just do in a day,” said Hennessy, recalling how he started the event in 2004 for a few friends.
Hennessy’s 2013 spring season is underway, and once again, the sights, sounds, art and ethnic communities of Downtown Los Angeles fit squarely in his plans. A day-long Race/LA takes place on Saturday, May 11. It is followed with a series of Central City-set CityRace competitions. The three-hour events will take place this month and next in South Park, Olvera Street, Chinatown and even underground in Metro stations. Hennessy, 48, stages more than 70 races a year in 15 locations throughout Southern California. The biggest are the see Race, page 17
City Has Plan to Turn ‘Graffiti Pit’ Into Park Deal in Place to Buy and Transform the Eyesore Across From City Hall by Ryan VaillanncouRt staff wRiteR
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f all goes according to plan, one of the Civic Center’s most notorious blight spots will finally be eradicated. The only thing better? In its place could be a park. The site in question is the vacant lot on the northwest corner of First and Spring streets. The city has reached a tentative deal to pay $7.5 million for the state-owned parcel that has been fenced off for 35 years. The city Recreation and Parks Commission in March approved a plan to buy the two-acre site using an array of funding sources, including Quimby fees (charged to developers to pay for park creation), zone change fees and money from a
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Recreation and Parks Department capital improvement fund. In total, the commission approved spending up to $9.9 million to acquire the site and pay for demolition work needed to clear the property of an underground parking facility. Additional, as-yet-undetermined funds would be needed to complete the park project. “If Downtown is going to continue its trajectory, we need to improve livability and green-space access for the residents of Downtown and this new park space will help us do that,” said 14th District City Councilman José Huizar, who has worked with the Recreation and Parks Department and Mayor Antonio Villraigosa’s office on the plan. “It will also offer an organic connectivity to Grand Park, which will in-
crease the number of people utilizing both open spaces.” The site just across from City Hall, which spreads west to Broadway, was home to a 13-story state office building constructed in 1931 that was severely damaged in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake. The state demolished the building in 1976 and the site has since sat mostly unused, except by skateboarders and squatters. Today the property is home to dozens of feral cats. Remnants of the old building, including the underground garage, which is not structurally sound, remain on the fencedoff property. The building bones, which have been routinely scrawled with graffiti — some know the site as the “graffiti see New Park, page 12
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