Watts Wilmington Avenue : Wilmington ReImagined
Final Report - September 27, 2017 This project was sponsored by Mayor Garcetti’s Great Streets Initiative
with Supplementary Report - March 19, 2018 
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Watts Wilmington Avenue : Wilmington ReImagined Final Report prepared by
Grant Housing and Economic Development Corporation Project Partners Office of Los Angeles Mayor Hon. Eric Garcetti Office of Los Angeles City Councilmember Hon. Joe Buscaino City of Los Angeles Great Streets Watts Century Latino Organization GlobalGreen, Natural Resources Defense Council Lot to Spot, LA-Más, MIG, Inc. Rachel Dowd Alan Hiroshi Nakagawa Watts Gang Task Force members Wilmington Avenue Businesses Watts Residents
cover photographs: Alan Hiroshi Nakagawa
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Watts Wilmington Avenue : Wilmington ReImagined Final Report Table of Contents
1. Project Partners
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2. Table of Contents
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3. Project Overview
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4. Introduction and Community Context . . . . . . . . . . .
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5. Planning Process
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6. Project Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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7. Data Collection Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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8. Data Analysis
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9. Community Vision and Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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10. Prioritized Recommendations
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11. Supplementary Report - March 19, 2018 Appendix
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3. Project Overview. A one-two page executive summary. Include goals, overview of community engagement, highlights from community engagement exercises, brief findings from data collection, and a summary of implementation/vision moving forward. This Great Street initiative seeks to improve Wilmington Avenue in Watts.
The project is being carried out as part of the City’s commitment to sustainability and equity, as expressed in Mayor Garcetti’s Great Streets program, pLAn and related efforts, tailoring a city-wide vision to the particular strengths and challenges of urban core communities such as Watts. The work will directly benefit Watts residents and help share City progress across all communities. Grant Housing and Economic Development Corporation and Watts ReImagined made initial application for a Great Streets “implementation” project, but we were grateful to be selected for a demonstration project, understanding that many worthwhile sites exist across Los Angeles. Watts ReImagined is an on-going collaboration chaired by Grant HEDC. The Watts Re:Imagined work group includes Watts-based organizations, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Global Green, KDI and others. www.wattsreimagined.org From the outset, our intention was to create a final document able to serve as a funding platform for needed improvements. The pop-up was to be an essential part of that effort: a gathering of residents enabling the project team to receive comment, answer questions and show an immediate, visual representation of future possibilities. The event was envisioned not as an end point, but as a point of departure for further sustained work. The project benefited from a baseline of prior studies - including the Watts Community Studio, Central Avenue Master Plan, CRA-LA Watts Corridor program - but we were well aware that extensive community engagement and site-specific analysis were essential precursors to development of the Wilmington Avenue plan. The project team also understood that health statistics and other social and economic data indicate serious urgency exists for addressing residents’ needs along the Wilmington corridor. Finally, we remained mindful of issues which interconnect local communities with regional and state-wide matters of focus and concern, such as climate change and greenhouse gas reduction. Through site surveys, team discussions and total-corridor engagements, culminating in the pop-up, we gained understanding of project area needs and stakeholder priorities. It became evident that the project challenge would not be to identify priority concerns, as these were quickly clear. Rather, the challenge was to organize the information received into a structured form to promptly seek funding for the agreed phases of work.
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Watts Base Map: KSA Design Studio
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Responding to an unanticipated funding opportunity, the project team shifted in early summer to prepare a complete application. This was an intensive effort, accomplishing within 2 months what would ordinarily require a 6 -12 month process. The result was a proposal of $23.0 million dollars for comprehensive urban greening improvements. While the grant application was not approved, compiling the proposal was a useful exercise. It demonstrated that the Wilmington initiative is not an abstract planning process, but a practical, visionary program committed to delivering results for residents. The document can serve as a basis for seeking future funding opportunities as they present themselves over the next 2-5 years. Full document link: http://bit.ly/2wXZU0e To move forward with implementation, we prepared $7.0M and $3.75M options, scaling back the baseline $23.0M plan into Phase I and Phase II tasks. All include greening and mobility elements; amenities like “gateway elements” and “play areas” are eliminated; full street grading and resurfacing is excluded in the $3.75M plan. See Appendix. 4. Introduction and Community Context. Provide a summary of the neighborhood context for the surrounding area and how this motivated your application to the program. You may include a project overview from other reports. This will help frame your work for someone who has never been to your neighborhood. What are the demographics? What kinds of character line your street? Is there history to call out? The Watts Great Streets project area is Wilmington Avenue from 103rd St to Imperial Highway. Extending 1.1 miles north-south, this section of Wilmington Avenue is a community-oriented corridor, with schools, places of worship and many small businesses serving the nearby diverse, working-family community. METRO Bus Line 612 Huntington Park - South Gate runs along Wilmington. There are striped bicycle lanes along one block, from 103rd to 104th Streets; for the balance of the Avenue, “Share the Road” yellow diamond-bicycle icon signage has been installed. With one travel lane in each direction, Wilmington is not a main north-south arterial. Residential streets branch off the Avenue, creating many pedestrian crossings, both marked and unmarked. As a result, nearly the entire project area has, for urban Los Angeles, a small-neighborhood scale which extends from 103rd Street until the METRO Blue Line grade crossing. After the rail line crossing, Wilmington widens out, taking on a more industrial, engineered hardscape character, with a criss-cross of freeway access ramps for the I-105 and Imperial Highway over the METRO transit center at Willowbrook/Rosa Parks Station. Wilmington Avenue’s neighborhood scale contrasts especially with Central Avenue, the main north-south corridor in Watts. Central Avenue has two traffic lanes in each direction, with much longer blocks and corresponding distances between required stops at traffic lights. Central also has an I-105 freeway entrance/exit just past its southern intersection with Imperial Highway. Consequently, Central Avenue is used as a regional and cross-town fast-traffic connector, while Wilmington is very much more a neighborhood-serving street. Still, vehicle traffic and pedestrian safety are a priority concern for area residents, as will be discussed further in the report.
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The diverse range of small businesses is a distinctive feature of Wilmington Avenue. Shops serve as centers of social life for residents as well as a source for daily necessities. Residents generally walk to these businesses; there are no medium-to-large retail stores with parking lots along the corridor and the surrounding residential neighborhood is densely populated. The 3 immediately bordering census tracts along Wilmington Avenue have a total population of just over 16,000 people as of 2010, all within an area measuring 1.4 miles by 1.0 mile. Stores range in condition from the disordered to the spotless. Some have installed bullet-proof glass compartments, serving customers from behind a thick, rotating clear cylindrical barrier. Others are entirely open, with family kitchens in the back and the aroma of lunch cooking drifting in the air. Ambient popular music is a constant in all the shops. There are homes interspersed with businesses all along Wilmington Avenue. These are nearly impossible to access, as residents put up gates, keep dogs and are generally apprehensive of uninvited visitors, as well as being away at work for good parts of the day. As is common throughout LA, new stucco construction is evident, as are hodgepodge additions, as dwelling units are added beside, above and behind wood-frame bungalow homes. The front yards contain a great variety of materials, ranging from tractor trailers under repair to chickens and vegetable gardens, flowering plants and ceramic figures. Watts has a long-time tradition of folk-art fabrication, with several examples along Wilmington such as empty bottles turned upside down on tree branches, car mufflers painted with face images, ribbons and metal strips decorating sections of wrought iron fencing, intricate constructions of small windmills. This home-made creative ability found its best known expression in the Watts Towers of Simon Rodia, which is immediately west of Wilmington Avenue along the Cultural Crescent at Santa Ana Avenue. See also http://www.noahpurifoy.com/ Project artist Alan Hiroshi Nakagawa brought beneficial awareness of this creative tradition to the project, initiating conversation with Watts Towers artists and incorporating community ideas into signage and project graphics. The State of California public health data maps indicate that the entire area bordering Wilmington Avenue is in the 96% + percentile of “most burdened - most disadvantaged� based on combined measurements of household income, toxic pollution and other key vulnerability indicators. (CalEnviroScreen 3.0 for census tracts 6037242700, 6037243100, 6037243000). https://oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen/report/calenviroscreen-30 See Appendix for maps. These severely impacted bordering residential areas show markedly varying conditions property to property. Carefully tended homes coexist with debris-strewn vacant lots, as along Wilmington popular barbershops and well-provisioned carnicerias front on broken lampposts, cracked sidewalks and abandoned cars.
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The Avenue has several spots where residents gather to socialize, with chairs set outside and passers-by greeted with friendly remark. Outside Alliance Simon Technology Academy and LAUSD Grape Street Elementary, sidewalks and crossings are busy during the morning and afternoon, as students and parents follow the school day schedule. This social aspect of Wilmington Avenue, with people gathering in shared spaces, reveals a residual trace of residents’ cultural history, suggesting how things once might have been around a courthouse square back in Texas and Louisiana or a plaza down in Mexico. The value residents find in spontaneous appropriation and informal improvement of shared spaces was confirmed during the demonstration event, with strong support shown for “gathering spots” and “public seating” improvements. Still, even in these welcoming places, the presence of hard times is never far away along Wilmington. Several low-cost motels serve the indigent, and cases of mental illness, drug and alcohol issues or just bad breaks and setbacks in life among the people is evident to see. Watching parents hurry past with their children firmly in-hand suggests the everyday challenges of this place, and, when observing groups of teens skylarking after being set free from class, it’s an obvious concern as to how they will navigate the choices and situations ahead. Our project team suggested Wilmington Avenue as a possible Great Street candidate, primarily because our past work had focused on 103rd and Central Avenues, and Wilmington Avenue was a logical, synergistic extension of this effort. After selection and as the project advanced with the benefit of MIG and CIty Staff expert perspective, it became evident that Wilmington was a good fit for the Great Streets Initiative: many serious issues warranting resolution, at a scale large enough to make a significant difference but small enough to consider within the budget and time limits of the program. 5. Planning Process. Provide a summary of how your team conducted outreach and solicited input about your work. In this section, convince the reader that your project and the process leading up to implementation was inclusive and comprehensive to the community. Please describe the partners who were involved in your project, the meetings that you hosted, the community partners/organizations, schools and churches you engaged, the volunteers you recruited, and the political organizations you engaged. Outreach and Community Engagement Outreach and community engagement has been a main feature of the Watts Wilmington Avenue Great Streets Challenge. The process began with a total street survey in February and March 2017, consisting of observation and documentation of all City-related street conditions. These include curbs, gutters, stormdrains, parkways and sidewalks, street trees and power poles, ADA ramps, crosswalks, lane striping and signage. Special attention was given to immediate safety and health improvement opportunities. The full existing conditions inventory and photo documentation are included in the Appendix.
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Next, the initial door-by-door contact with Wilmington Avenue businesses, residents, schools and houses of worship was carried out in March 2017. See Appendix for stakeholders list. The initial contact consisted of introduction of the Great Streets program and an invitation to provide comments and suggestions as to priority improvements . The contact included distribution of an English-Spanish information sheet with phone and email contact information. See Appendix. Feedback received during this initial period confirmed direct street survey results, with stakeholders consistently pointing out existing conditions which could benefit from City attention. Businesses were appreciative of any improvements, but asked that work not interfere with their customer access if at all possible. All stakeholders on the list were directly contacted at least 3 times during the project. Stakeholders who expressed particularly strong interest in the project, or with strongly-held concerns about specific project elements, were contacted at least twice more for further, detailed engagement. Examples of issues of concern very typically involved immediate conditions at their property or business, such as inadequate drainage or broken utility poles. While mindful not to raise expectations as to immediate action by the City, we assured residents and businesses that their issues were taken seriously and that every effort would be made to include their concerns in any subsequent actual work. Where possible, contact information for the responsible City Department was provided. At this stage in the outreach / engagement work, it was evident that Wilmington Corridor stakeholders were busy: working, operating their businesses and carrying out regular responsibilities of family life. Consequently, convening a central-location event was not deemed effective; rather a consistent, regular presence meeting people where they were proved to be the most effective way to share information and receive feedback. The project team reviewed and discussed the results of outreach and field surveys. City staff prepared a Department-specific list of contact information, indicating which Department was responsible for each existing street condition. This information was provided to Wilmington Avenue businesses during subsequent door-by-door contacts during May and June 2017. See Appendix. In July 2017, a follow-up full project area canvas was completed, using again a bi-lingual flyer. The project sheet provided a project update, listing results received so far and letting people know what would be happening next. Comments received during this outreach phase were the same as during the initial contacts. 
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In August 2017, a further full project area contact was carried out, inviting all Wilmington Avenue stakeholders to a design meeting to consider alternative versions for a signage program. The project team also completed a guide to area businesses and cultural destinations. With project culmination in September 2017, a full Wilmington Avenue door-by-door canvas, social media and email list contacts informed and invited all stakeholder to the “pop-up” event. At the same time, residents were informed of the street closer process and consent obtained for the one-day event. Parallel Work With City Officials and Other Community Partners As part of the site documentation work, a project area “slide show” was prepared, with photographs and narrative. The photographs and narrative linked Great Street program purposes, feedback received from Wilmington Avenue stakeholders and actual existing conditions along the corridor. This slide show was shared with the project team and made available to City officials during project update meetings. Community partners were well aware of existing conditions, so collaborative work here focused on organizing the one-day community “pop-up” event. Partners provided essential assistance with volunteer labor, volunteer recruitment, supplies, community notification and day-of-event organization. Free fruits and vegetables were provided by project partner Lot-to-Spot Social media was deployed, with event postings on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Event flyering also was carried out at key community gathering spots: Alma Reeves Woods Watts Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, the Watts Tower Art Center and the MLK Shopping Center. Finally, individual word-of-mouth networks were engaged by formal presentations at key community gatherings such as the Watts Gang Task Force and by informal conversations as they occurred during the course of the work program. 6. Project Implementation. After you describe the planning process, describe what elements went into the demonstration or build-out of your project. On the day(s) of your event(s) how many people attended? What kinds of activities happened? Anecdotally, explain the responses and feedback you heard from community members. Preliminarily, it’s important to note that project team internal meetings were necessary complements to the outward facing community engagement work during the entire project span. During these project meetings - usually by conference call but in person within Watts at key project junctures - Great Street City team members and the expert planning and design firm, team artist and business opportunity specialist - provided Grant HEDC and other local partners essential insight and guidance as to the process structure.
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Specifically, we discussed recent results, identified immediate next steps and confirmed the long-lead time project requirements. Documentation of this work exists in extensive emails, project update memos and charts. Thus, “Project Implementation” had two essential, interconnected features : community engagement and project team collaboration. These two interconnected features combined to inform basic elements of the “pop-up” demonstration project. The “pop-up” took place on Wednesday, September 20, 2017. A location along the west side of Wilmington Avenue between 103rd and 104th Streets was selected, where an existing wide striped buffer area along Wilmington could easily be re-configured for safe and accessible public use. Usefully, the location had immediately bordering intersections across and along Wilmington at 104th Street; here, temporary demonstration crosswalks could be installed, used by residents to demonstrate their value, then removed. Finally, the site offered simultaneous visibility and logistical advantages, in that while being close to the busy 103rd Street intersection, no businesses were disrupted by the event and no private homes have entrances along that section of Wilmington Avenue. 111 community participants registered at the event and participated in data yielding activities. Many more visitors stopped by, asked about the displays or accepted the free fruits and vegetable offered; we estimate that 76 people took food back home. Residents attending provided written and descriptive feedback on the displays. This feedback is summarized below and illustrated on the scoring board. Safe Crosswalks: Pedestrian Lighting: Street Trees: Landscaped Curb Extensions: Plaza/Gathering Spaces: Public Seating: Native Drought Tolerant Plants: Signage Kiosks:
65 points 29 points 22 points 20 points 19 points 19 points 14 points 2 points
A selection of event photos are included in the Appendix and a full set of photographs have been posted to a shared cloud drive. In addition to the adult engagement elements, Alan Hiroshi Nakagawa developed and provided an activity center for children that included musical instruments available for them to play as well as opportunities to demonstrate their artistic talents through the creation of posters expressing their ideas and imaginative vision for the neighborhood
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Watts Wilmington Avenue Community Pop-Up Site Plan
< - 103rd Street - >
Wilmington Avenue
North
< - 104th Street - > Page 20 of 42
Watts Community Pop Up Site Wilmington Avenue at 104th Street
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Watts Community Priorities With Scores Indicated
#6 = 14
#3 = 22
#4 = 20
#7 = 2
#1 = 69
#2 = 29
#5 = 19
#5 = 19 tie
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7. Data Collection Methods. Describe the process you undertook to collect information about your project. What survey questions did you ask; what did you count; what other information did you seek? If you collected surveys, describe whom you collected from and where you collected. If you conducted counts, describe where, when and how you conducted counts. Data collection consisted of a completing a qualitative field survey, photo-documenting existing conditions and preparing a list of all City-responsible issues along the Wilmington Corridor. Next, via door-to-door survey, businesses and residents were asked to provide unprompted views on what they considered the most important issues to address. Answers were consistent, with respondents expressing a generalized concern about all conditions taken together, or specific concern about an immediate issue directly at their property. For example: “Everything”, “Todo necesita trabajo” “Just take a look” “Do you see that abandoned car? It’s been there for a month”. “Everytime it rains, that basin overflows. Last week there was a pool of water that completely ran over the curb.” When asked to say which among their concerns were most important, responses divided into two basic categories: First, concerns related to traffic and safety, such as “cars really speed along here sometimes, especially in the morning and afternoon. It’s just dangerous to cross, especially for kids”. Second, concerns relating to the overall condition of the street: “It just looks neglected”. Solicitation of views almost inevitably turned to requests for action, as in “when is the City going to do something?” Importantly, every business would ask that any street repairs create minimal disruption for their customers, an entirely understandable priority for small, local businesses. Indeed, most businesses and residents had only limited time and patience for extended inquiry, needing to get back to work or to continue about their day. In light of these responses, and in view of the totally apparent existing conditions along Wilmington, continuing with a “checklist” survey was deemed unlikely to yield additional useful data.
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Existing Conditions Examples
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Broken Trees / Damaged Tree Wells
Abandoned Vehicles
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At that point, effort turned to incorporating feedback received into a meaningful, comprehensive work plan and to structuring the “pop-up” event so as to best reflect input received. During the pop-up, project boards provided residents opportunity to designate their priorities. “Scoring Dots” applied to improvement categories - indicating 1st, 2nd and 3rd ranked improvement preferences - quantified community preferences. This approach allowed residents time to consider options and ask questions of the project team. Photographs, maps and the pop-up configuration with potted trees and temporary cross-walks help illustrate the improvement options. This information is described further in Section 6. and documented in the Appendix. 8. Data Analysis. Analyze your data findings in this section. What does the data tell you about the impact of your project? Remember to only draw conclusions in this section from your data collection, as opposed to anecdotes from other sources. You may include case studies and stories in other sections of this report instead. As described above in Section 7. Data Collection, a survey of stakeholder priorities is not a simple exercise of tabulating different responses by separate neat categories. The simple act of soliciting opinion about street issues can be a fraught exercise. First, people are very busy and are not willing to devote more than a few minutes to such questions. Second, and more significantly, questions about neighborhood conditions can quickly trigger suspicion, resentment, resignation, anger and amused skepticism. Most people contacted along Wilmington Avenue do not think conditions there are likely to change. Asking people their opinion about a matter with which they contend every day - ie broken sidewalks and so on - but about which they feel no sense of control - elicits basic observations as to the neglect, which conditions are readily evident to anyone in a position to see. In this situation, data analysis can take two useful directions: A. Evaluation of clearly evident existing street conditions and creating a prioritized list of action B. Analysis of causes and recommendations as to process and procedure measures which might result in positive change ie work to improve conditions identified Fortunately, the Great Street program provides a meaningful structure for addressing both these outcomes of data analysis, with the pop-up creating an effective, welcoming venue for soliciting resident opinion. The combination of community input, local knowledge and expert experience helps translate the clearly evident work needs into an actionable, prioritized list. This list can become a funding platform to move forward with actual beneficial projects where people work and live.
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Wilmington Avenue : A Community Vision for Improvement
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Additionally, the Great Streets program helps surface the underlying systemic issues that have contributed to the adverse conditions documented. While systemic change is exceedingly difficult, that the Great Streets program seeks the analysis is an essential initial step. 9. Community Vision and Capacity. Based on the engagement process, data collection and project demonstration/implementation, describe what you believe is your community’s vision for the corridor, include a visual graphic that communicates the community vision. Perhaps that vision is not singular. If so, provide more details about competing or diverse visions. How might they be reconciled? Are those visions mutually exclusive? The project site survey, data collection and issues inventory, outreach process and the culminating “pop-up” event demonstrated a clear and consistent community vision for Wilmington Avenue. As described, the community vision emphasizes basic infrastructure needs such as sidewalk repair and safety measures such as new crosswalks especially at heavily used community locations. The Great Streets project team provided invaluable technical assistance and professional planning expertise to translate these consistently expressed vision elements into a cohesive, actionable list of priority steps. Describe existing assets and resources within your organization and the community that will help achieve the community vision. What skills, resources, and existing capacity does your organization / community have to achieve this vision. Grant HEDC has practical experience and long-standing commitment to the Watts community. Watts ReImagined and local project partners have similar and complementary skills, resources and capacity. Participating in the Great Streets challenge has itself greatly helped expand community knowledge. Risk now exists that, having educated the community about possible positive changes, community leadership and the City will not deliver on improvement concepts presented in the visioning process. We and our project partners are fully committed to making visible progress and have the resources to help make the community vision a reality. Are there resources, skills, or capacity that your community does not have that may prevent your community from its vision? A basic challenge in community-based work in Watts and similar communities elsewhere is that most residents are busy, earning a living and providing for the families, often working multiple jobs or going to school while attending to children, parents and members of extended families. It is not that community members lack resources and skills, it’s simply that regular engagement with government projects is not possible due to everyday life demands.
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Overall Conceptual Design : A Plan for Action
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Residents regularly express disillusionment or skepticism as to the value of participation, accurately observing that many plans and promises have been made but the immediate neighborhood conditions along Wilmington Avenue offers decisive evidence that these plans and promises have no real value. Finally, and especially recently, residents may feel apprehensive about any voluntary engagement with government officials, preferring to keep a low profile and simply continue about their everyday life business. Are there other challenges to implementing the vision external to your community? There are significant cultural and social-economic forces which individually and collectively work against meaningful investment in communities such as Watts. Media can sensationalize negative events for their own purposes and entirely miss the underlying truth of individual, family and community life. Further, material status and success may be glamorized, and long-time residents or new immigrants deemed to be entirely responsible for community conditions. Finally, where an insightful systemic critique may occur, this critique can sometimes take the form of individual attention-seeking and not the kind of focused, technical and tedious work required to make lasting positive systemic change. It is not the task of City improvement initiatives to resolve these more embedded cultural and social-economic concerns. It is useful to have awareness of them. External conditions can help shed light on community dynamics and assist in issue resolution and development of shared goals and common understandings. The Great Street program has been a positive step in this regard and should be of great benefit to Watts residents as the next phase of work begins. 10. Prioritized Recommendations. How can the City support your communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision? The City has already and continues to support the communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision. The City provides this support in multiple ways, of which the Mayorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Great Streets program is the most recent and among the most important. As described further below, the most important way the City can assist local communities and stakeholders is though sustained attention within a structured, collaborative process. In Watts and its counterpart communities elsewhere in Los Angeles, sustained attention is a critical success factor, as multiple, interconnected priorities exist which cannot be resolved within short periods of time or by a quick, cosmetic fix to one aspect of community need. In addition, funding source cycles are such that multiples of years are required to accumulate resources sufficient to address the critical mass of improvement priorities.
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This is the conclusion of your report that should prompt the City into further action based on the Communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recommendations. Separate your recommendations into short, medium, and long term recommendations. Short Term: Focus on relatively low-cost, high-value repair/replace measures - Basic Infrastructure. Curbs, gutters, sidewalks, parkways, stormdrain repair, ADA compliance - Street Lighting. Full project area assessment, with retro-fit, replacement, repair - City Utility Poles. A full project area assessment and removal and / or replacement - Street Trees. A full project area assessment and removal and / or replanting program Medium : Focus on moderate cost measures requiring additional technical analysis - Full Great Streets are Greenstreets program eg stormwater capture, permeable pavers - Intersection improvement plan, consisting of cross-walks, bump-outs, signage, warning lights and other elements as feasible and appropriate - Full avenue traffic analysis and re-striping program, accommodating transit stops, bicycle lanes, speed limit signs and related calming measures - Alley / Street interfaces, addressing blighted conditions, inadequate drainage Long-Term : Focus on higher cost, long lead time capital improvement measures - Street regrading; elimination of the rise and fall of Wilmington at Santa Ana Avenue - Comprehensive safety and mobility measures at the METRO Blue Line - Wilmington Avenue grade crossing Evaluation of specific further action steps should include assessment of how possible measures connect with and help further critical city, regional and state-wide goals; these include: achieving measurable Greenhouse Gas Reductions, advancing neighborhood-scale resiliency, providing affordable housing, increasing access to public transit and to local and regional job opportunities and addressing the severe public health risk associated with environmental factors such as impaired water quality, air pollution and toxic sites near homes and schools. These prioritized recommendations should reflect your community engagement throughout the Challenge Grant project and the data that you have collected. Small-scale safety multi-modal transportation improvements should be included in short-term recommendations. This section is a special call-out sub section for the short term measures with emphasis on safety multi-modal transportation improvements.
- Small-scale improvements should focus on the street-crossing locations most heavily used by the Wilmington corridor school students and parents, as at 111th and 112th Streets, which serve Grape Street Elementary School of LAUSD. - A safety-oriented, multi-modal detail review should be completed at the METRO / Wilmington Avenue crossing, which presents serious obstacles to pedestrian and bicycle access to and from the Rosa Parks/Willowbrook Station, especially for families with baby strollers or special need residents. Any suggested City-wide policy changes should be included in long-term recommendations. One possible City-wide policy change to consider is a project-priority system that has objective, quantitative elements, so that resources are directed to areas of maximum need, irrespective of
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where they might be located. The CalEnviroScreen data tool is one useful source of information as to ranking of locations which might benefit from sustained attention and action. Provide some thought on how recommendations may be achieved. Be sure to include how the City might continue to work with and relate to your community and organizations. Recommendations may be achieved by continued collaboration among local stakeholders, City Departments and elected leaders. That there is a shared, agreed plan for Wilmington Avenue developed though this collaboration will make an important positive difference moving forward. Each party within the collaborative team has appropriate roles and responsibilities. For the City, which has a very great number of interconnected priority goals, one way to work effectively with community stakeholders is to have in place a comprehensive, transparent process for identifying and prioritizing local street improvement projects. Regular project convenings, whether by conference call or in person, with project report-outs, will help measure progress towards agreed goals. A Great Streets implementation score card issued quarterly could focus management attention and provide community stakeholders - as well as project funders - with insight into the work process. Designating a single individual within the City as the person responsible for working with stakeholders and implementing agreed improvements along each Great Street segment could help drive projects forward from concept to completion. This position could conceivable manage 4 to 6 separate Great Street projects simultaneously. Such a job would require inter-department coordination, close liaison with the local Council Office, contractor direction, stakeholder collaboration and frequent, consistent presence in the field. The City could help support groups working in different parts of the City by organizing regular “summit meetings” among these community organizations, allowing for shared learning and network building. This in-person network benefit could also be supported by an on-line and social media initiative common to all participants. An excellent model is the “Collaborative Stakeholder Structure” developed by the State of California Strategic Growth Council for its TCC Program (Transformative Climate Communities). Prepared with the intensive engagement of community-based organizations, this approach to comprehensive, place-based investment can be formalized in a project agreement document and ensure a meaningful voice for all community stakeholders early and throughout the project process. Establishment of a City working group across Departments together with the Collaborative Stakeholder Structure would help coordinate project elements and make sure all groups are represented at the table where decisions are made about communities. Will your organization continue to have a presence on the street? Yes, we are committed to continued work in Watts and along Wilmington Avenue. The Great Streets initiative provides a major new platform for improvements which will benefit residents, businesses and the City. - - - end - - -
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Watts Wilmington Avenue : Wilmington ReImagined
Supplementary Report This project was sponsored by Mayor Garcettiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Great Streets Initiative
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Supplementary Report Project Overview From the project overview it is not clear what the goal of the project is. Could try to specify that in this section. The project goal is to implement Mayor Garcettiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vision for Los Angeles communities and the Great Streets program through a community-based planning process in Watts. Specifically, the intention is to include priority goals into a single program document. These goals incorporate vision zero, safe routes to school. pLAn sustainability recommendations, multi-mode mobility measures such as walk and bicycle, as well as public transit access and urban greening measures. As detailed in the report and in this supplement, community engagement is an essential element of the Great Street LA initiative. Accordingly, a project goal is to reflect resident priorities in the final report documentation. Finally, the project goal is to create a platform document for implementation funding. Fortunately, the combined efforts of the Mayorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Great Streets Team staff and the MIG planning experts were able to directly support the successful award of Phase I funding through the Watts TCC initiative. Try to specify the the types of community engagement activities you carried out and include a brief statement on the results (numbers) from the data you collected through out the project. The Community Engagement Activities carried out consisted of a full spectrum of work, ranging from door-to-door canvasing to the culminating pop-up street festival and event. As the Wilmington Avenue project area is a community-serving commercial corridor, the most effective means of reaching constituents is by on-site contact. This is the case because local business owners are not able to take time out of their busy schedule to attend mass meetings. Based on this reality, our project team carried out sustained, multiple contacts with business owners by direct in-person visits. Flyers and project information sheets were prepared (in English and Spanish) and distributed. When time permitted, extended conversation and project Q and A was conducted. Telephone and email contact information was obtained and a regular email project update sent out.
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The project team meet regularly with key community groups and conducted a design workshop for local families and artists. These outreach steps culminated in the pop-up event, with comment sheets and a project board where resident feedback could be given via a “dot” exercise.
Introduction and Community Engagement Include the demographic makeup of the community such as race, income, age etc The Watts Wilmington project area demographic makeup is based on census data compiled by the State of California and available via the CalEnviroScreen program. https://oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen/report/calenviroscreen-30 Demographic data is included on the table and graphic as Exhibit A. Reports says the appendix contains a list of stakeholders but it was not included in the version they submitted. Please see attached list of stakeholders and engagement detail Exhibits B1 and B2. Include numbers showing how many people were engaged in total including the from all the outreach activities. Please see attached list of Exhibit B stakeholders and narrative of engagement detail below. An total of 512 individuals were contacted for the project, both directly and though community groups, with distribution as detailed in a series of events below. Door-to-Door distribution of project flyers and face-to-face discussion of site area issues. February 2017 to September 2017. A full complement of 3 north to south project area canvassing was conducted and completed. Feedback received was share with the project team and served to help fine-tune the project process. For example, we determined that a planned gathering of business and property owners would not be effective, as they were fully occupied running their respective businesses. Rather, inperson distribution of project information and, as time allowed, follow-up person-toperson conversation was ultimately deemed to be most effective. Artists Workshop. Wends August 23, 2017. Carried out with a focus on wayfinding and project design elements. Supported by project artist and design expert Alan Nakagawa. Community Meeting Presentations. During the entire project term, individual presentations were made to the regularly convening Watts community organizations
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such as the Watts Gang Task Force and flyers distributed with follow-up contact information at the Watts Neighborhood Council. Watts Street Event. Pop Up. The outreach and engagement process culminating in the Watts Street Event September 20, 2017. 111 community participants registered at the “Pop Up” event and participated in data yielding activities. Many more visitors stopped by, asked about the displays or accepted the free fruits and vegetable offered; we estimate that 76 people took food back home. Residents attending provided written and descriptive feedback on the displays. This feedback is summarized below and illustrated on the scoring board. (Attached as Exhibit C).
Data Analysis Include the data collected in your outreach and analyze it in this section to go along with the narrative you have provided. Data collected in outreach is summarized as follows. Safe Crosswalks: Pedestrian Lighting: Street Trees: Landscaped Curb Extensions: Plaza/Gathering Spaces: Public Seating: Native Drought Tolerant Plants: Signage Kiosks:
65 points 29 points 22 points 20 points 19 points 19 points 14 points 2 points
During the unprompted interaction with Watts residents and community groups, where people were asked as to their own priority goals in their own words, the issues mentioned closely align with the above pre-established categories: Public Safety Basic City Services Youth Programs / Jobs
56% of respondents mentioned as 1st or 2nd priority 44& of respondents mentioned as 1st of 2nd priority mentioned by over 65% of respondents; not program goal
The public feedback aligned very closely with the visual field inspection carried out during the Phase I of data collection. A list of field inspection information is provided as Exhibit D.
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Visual data representations such as bar charts, graphs or pie charts would be helpful for this section. Visual data representation is provided as Exhibit A.
Prioritized Recommendations What other specific ways can the City support you in achieving the community’s vision? The City has fortunately already supported achieving the community’s vision by the strong recommendation by Mayor Garcetti for the Watts Transformative Climate Community application, which application included funding for Phase I implementation of the Wilmington Great Streets work program. Moving forward, the City can assist by ensuring that urban greening and public safety measures identified within the Great Streets program are understood and supported by the responsible City departments such as Street Services.
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Exhibit A
Great Streets LA Wilmington Avenue Watts Supplementary Report - March 19, 2018
Watts Wilmington Avenue : Demographic Data
source: State of California CalEnviroScreen
Census Tract
EnviroScreen
6037
Percentile
Population
% in Poverty
Latino
AfricanAmerican
White
Other
243000
96% +
6,769
94.0%
79.0%
19.0%
1.0%
1.0%
242700
96% +
5,273
99.0%
72.0%
26.0%
1.0%
1.0%
243100
96% +
5,273
97.0%
65.0%
32.0%
2.0%
1.0%
Total
96% +
17,315
96.4%
72.6%
25.1%
1.3%
1.0%
â&#x20AC;Š
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Exhibit B1
Great Streets LA Wilmington Avenue Watts Watts Wilmington Avenue Supplementary Report - March 19, 2018 City of Los Angeles Great Streets
Address
Description
Type
Comment
1 10306
Corner Retail & Lavanderia
Retail
mixed retail
2 10360
Watts Century Latino
Community
-
3 10423
Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist
HoW
-
4 10501
Larina's Candy & Mini Mart
Bodega
gathering spot
5 10503, 10505
Supreme Beauty Supply
Barber
part of 10501
6 10512
First Unity Mission Baptist
HoW
-
7 10609
OVert Market
Bodega
closed?
8 10624
B&M 99 Cent Mart
Bodega
-
9 10720
Alliance Simon Technology HS
School
-
10 10800
Cultural Crescent : Towers / Art Center
Public
-
11 10800
Creative Kids Playschool (closed)
School
at Santa Ana
12 10801
Hills Villa Motel
Motel
-
13 10902
Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall
HoW
-
14 10905
Temple Apostolico Sanidad Divina
HoW
-
15 10947
N-Joy Tommy's Liquors
Bodega
-
16 10951
Eglisia Reunion Familiar Christiana
HoW
now a shelter
17 10982
Church of Christ
HoW
-
18 11000
Wilmington Tires
Salvage
hang-out spot
19 11016
Grooming Supplies
Beauty
closed?
20 11021
First Timothy Missionary Baptist Church
HoW
-
21 11100 block
Grape Street Elementary School
School
LAUSD K-5
22 11101
Macedonia Baptist
HoW
no one ever there
Sub Total Wilmington Avenue Corridor Joyner Elementary
School
LocoL Restaurant
Gathering Place
Mud Town Farm
Urban Agr
Pitts Community Center
Civic
Watts Towers 103rd Station
Transit Node
Watts Towers 103rd Station
DWP and Market
Sub Total Other 1/4 Mile Radius Sub Total 1/4 Mile Radius 23 11105
Party Supplies
Retail
closed?
24 11111
The Cut #2
Barber Shop
open
25 11111
Chicken n Roll
Food
open
26 11200
Narcisos Mini Mart
Bodega
small, clean
27 11201
Carniceria Latina Geraldo
Carniceria
well-stocked
28 11202
Watts Cyclery
Sales & Repair
busy business
29 11207
Tobacco Mart
Bodega
closed?
30 11218
EJ Garcia Iron Works
Industrial
-
31 11220
Guzman Mattress
Retail
-
32 11228
C & G Mini Market (not always open)
Bodega
-
33 11300 block
Mirror Motel
Motel
-
34 11303
Shopping Cart Mfgr Co
Industrial
-
35 11332
Jordan's Cafe
Food
closed
36 11400
Revival Center Tried Stone Church
HoW
-
37 11508
Ace Hi Liquor
Liquor Store
busy
Sub Total Wilmington Corridor +1/4 to 1/2 Mile Radius
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Exhibit B2
Great Streets LA Wilmington Avenue Watts Supplementary Report - March 19, 2018 Stakeholders and Engagement Detail Numbers of Contacts Indicated
Project Area Canvassing (220)
-
Wilmington Avenue Business Owners (186) Faith-Based Organizations within Project Area (6) LAUSD Parent-Teacher Group (4) Simon Charter School Administration and Parent-Teacher Group (2) Wilmington Avenue bordering residents and homeowners (22)
In-Depth Project Interviews and Q / A with Interested Stakeholders (18) Email and Telephone Follow-Up (48) Social Media Postings Community Organization Meetings and Project Updates
- Watts ReImagined (48) - Watts Gang Task Force (21) - Watts Neighborhood Council (16) City of Los Angeles Agency and Public Officials
- Los Angeles Mayor Great Streets Team - Los Angeles City Council District 15 - Housing Authority of Los Angeles Watts Towers Artists, Residents and Local Artists Design Charette (16) Pop-Up Event (125) Total of All Above, Excluding City of Los Angeles Agency and Officials = 512 ---
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Exhibit C
Great Streets LA Wilmington Avenue Watts Supplementary Report - March 19, 2018
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Exhibit D
Great Streets LA Wilmington Avenue Watts Supplementary Report - March 19, 2018
Great Streets Challenge
Community Outreach Component
Initial: March 3, 2017
Watts Wilmington Avenue
List of Street Improvement Catgories
Updated: July 12,2017
Example of Issue Street Element
Based on Field Survey & Initial Outreach
Alley Entrances
Alley Entrance Grates
-
Alleys
Paving / Dumping / Drainage
-
Bulky Items in Public Way
Couch and Houshold Random Dumping
-
City Trash Receptacles
Broken / Not Emptied
-
Crosswalks
Location / Proper Striping
-
Curbcuts ADA
Inconsistent locating
-
Curbs and Sidewalks
Cracked / Damaged / Curb Paint
-
Major Nuisance & Blight
Abandoned Cars
-
METRO Crossing
No pedestrian crossing
-
On-site violations
Private property eg dumpsters
-
Parkways
Drainage / Maintenance
-
Pay Telephones
Damaged / Out of Service
-
Stormdrains
Clogging / Inadequate Draining
-
Street Lighting
Inadequate / Obsolete
-
Street Signage
eg Speed Limit / Wayfinding
-
Street Striping
Traffic / Bike Lanes
-
Street Trees
Damaged Trees / Tree Wells
-
Utility Poles
Broken / Damaged
-
- - - end - - -
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