LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN
NEWS Volume 37, Number 39
INSIDE
Reviewing Tranquility Base
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A new restaurant, an Exposition Park guide, and other happenings Around Town.
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New plan aims to make Downtown site a green manufacturing center.
W W W. D O W N T O W N N E W S . C O M
September 29, 2008
Little Tokyo Gym Plan Approved Fourteen-Year Effort to Build Recreation Center Gets the Green Light by Ryan Vaillancourt staff writer
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Get on the tour bus.
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The Biltmore Hotel turns 85.
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photo by Gary Leonard
Thomas Yee (left) and Scott Ito of the Little Tokyo Service Center, which hopes to build a $15 million gymnasium in the community. On Sept. 23, the City Council approved the plan.
Celebrating the High Holy Days.
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Evolution of a Neighborhood South Group Completes Three-Building, $305 Million Investment in Downtown by Richard Guzmán city editor
Walking for a good cause.
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The verdict on ‘9 to 5’.
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an basketball help save Little Tokyo? If you combine it with volleyball, martial arts and thousands of youths, stakeholders in the neighborhood say absolutely. After the City Council approved a plan last week to let the Little Tokyo Service Center build a gymnasium on a city-owned property, those advocates now have a chance to prove it. No problem, said LTSC Executive Director Bill Watanabe. “If we build it, I know they will come,” he said. For 14 years, the nonprofit LTSC has been waging a persistent campaign to develop a gymnasium in the area to host youth sporting events. In addition to providing an athletic and entertainment venue for the community, the LTSC sees the $15 million facility as an opportunity to re-introduce hosts of
Japanese-American families spread throughout Los Angeles to Little Tokyo. Popular Japanese-American youth and adult basketball leagues are one of the few ties that bind an ethnic community that, in recent years, has strayed from Little Tokyo, Watanabe said. The LTSC estimates that some 10,000 Japanese Americans participate in basketball leagues around Los Angeles County. Another 3,000 play in volleyball leagues. Some of the basketball leagues, like the Nisei Athletic Union, are iterations of clubs founded before World War II, a testament to the game’s history among Japanese Americans. “If we could create the gym, we thought then it becomes a part of the children’s lives and they connect with Little Tokyo like, ‘Hey, this is our community; this is our heritage,’” Watanabe said. “If they don’t come, they don’t care and if see Little Tokyo, page 9
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lthough you’re surrounded by highrises, it’s easy to stand on the sixth floor pool terrace at Evo and imagine a tight, and maybe slightly voyeuristic neighborhood. From here, a man and a woman can be seen sunbathing on the pool deck that unites two adjacent buildings. One of them waves up at a reporter looking down at them. The curiously named Evo, the third and final installment of a project from Portland-based developer the South Group, has its grand opening on Sunday, Oct. 5. It marks the transformation of
a block that was empty five years ago to one that has more than 700 residences today. It also marks the culmination of a $305 million investment. The 635,000-square-foot Evo follows the completion of South Group’s Elleven and Luma buildings, which opened in 2006 and last year, respectively. The 23-story, $160 million project is both the most upscale and the largest of the buildings, adding 311 condominiums. Priced from the mid-$400,000s to more than $3 million for units that range from 730-3,500 square feet, Evo lays down yet another brick in the rapidly rising neighborhood of South Park, one that is see South Group, page 10
photo by Gary Leonard
South Group’s Evo, a $160 million condominium project, opens this month. The building is 30% sold, a steep drop from the developer’s previous projects on the same block.
Big Questions for Mayor’s Housing Plan Efforts to Mandate Affordable Units in Other Cities Have Produced Mixed Results by Anna Scott
Check out the Elevate Film Festival.
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20 CALENDAR LISTINGS 27 MAP 29 CLASSIFIEDS
staff writer
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n the midst of an economic slump that has pummeled the nationwide housing industry, the city is working on a plan that would require nearly every new condominium and apartment project to include an affordable component. Still a work in progress, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Mixed-Income Ordinance has already created division in the local housing community. A preliminary draft of Villaraigosa’s MIO, released last month to a small number of housing and development groups, calls for all new buildings with 20 or more units to reserve 12.5%-22.5% of them for low- to moderate-
income households, or take steps or pay to have them off-site. The measure could have particular impact in Downtown Los Angeles, where thousands of market-rate and affordable units are in the pipeline. With word of the plan spreading, many are unsure what impact it would have, and whether it could create affordable housing without stymieing development. Observers note that although more than 300 counties, cities and towns, including approximately 170 in California, have managed to create some form of mandatory affordable housing — also known as inclusionary zoning — results are mixed. “Many cities throughout the country have suc-
cessfully adopted inclusionary programs,” said City Planning Director Gail Goldberg. “I think L.A. has a more difficult problem creating affordable housing than other cities do,” she continued, but, “there are a lot of good, creative people who are right now trying to figure out, ‘How can we make this work in L.A?’” In recent weeks, some in the local business community have argued that Villaraigosa’s proposal does not offer enough incentives to offset the costs to developers. A task force of developers, organized by the Downtown-based Central City Association, has formed to work on the policy. Meanwhile, a broad coalition of organizations see Housing, page 11
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