Erasure or Remembrance? Japanese Internment 80 Years Later By Terelle Jerricks, Managing Editor
F
[See Internment, p. 4]
A detail of the memorial on Terminal Island to the once-thriving Japanese fishing village. Photo by Arturo Garcia-Ayala
SAN PEDRO — Supervisor Janice Hahn and Genton Cockum Partners on Feb. 9, announced the demolition of the San Pedro Courthouse, which will pave the way for a new mixed-use community, comprising market-rate and affordable housing, joint-use open space, and expansive ground floor retail space. Demolition is expected to take up to 50 days with construction anticipated to begin in the third quarter of 2022. The San Pedro Courthouse operated from 1969 to 2013 and was among the many county courthouses across the state closed because of budget constraints and the opening of the Duekmejian regional courthouse in Long Beach. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors entered into an exclusive agreement with Genton Cockrum Partners for the redevelopment project in 2018. Following years of planning, Genton Cockrum Partners tapped MVE + Partners to design the eight-story building, which will include 300 apartment units spanning studio,
one-, two- and three-bedrooms, as well as approximately 20,000 square feet of ground floor retail occupied primarily by a food hall with areas for communal seating, entertainment and community activities. As part of its plan, Genton Cockrum Partners revealed that more than 20% of the units — 60 in total — will be offered at rents considered affordable to households earning no more than 80% of the Los Angeles area median income. In addition, the developers will use entirely union labor for construction of the project, working with the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council. The courthouse property on 6th and Centre streets is owned by the County of Los Angeles and Supervisor Janice Hahn has led the charge for its redevelopment, which is labor-financed and labor built. The courthouse has been vacant since 2013 when the state consolidated many local courts into regional ones.
“Today, we said our last goodbyes to the old courthouse,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn. “Regardless of what your memories are with this building, it served our community well for as long as it could. Today we are officially closing the door on that chapter of this property and opening the door to the next. This project is an ideal one for downtown San Pedro. We are building apartments that people can afford, bringing more people to downtown and building a space everyone can enjoy. And yet this project doesn’t address the accessibility to justice that the closing of the courthouse created. As one noted jurist commented, ‘Denial of access to justice is denial of justice.’” Genton Cockrum Partners has been dedicated to delivering a project that aligns with the authenticity of San Pedro. Working with the San Pedro Neighborhood Council, Chamber of Commerce and Business Improvement District, Genton Cockrum Partners revised initial design plans to incorporate street level commercial design and public open space elements intended to be more consistent with nearby historic buildings and contribute to the vitality of downtown [See Demo, p. 3] 1
February 17 - March 2, 2022
19th premiere of LAHIFF: Remaining relevant amidst a pandemic p. 9 New LA City law will make it easier for restaurants to werve alcohol p. 10
Hahn and GCP Begin Demo of Vacant Courthouse
Real People, Real News, Really Effective
eb. 19 marks the 80th anniversary of when Terminal Island’s residents became the first Japanese Americans on the West Coast to be forcibly removed from their homes. They were forced to evacuate their homes within 48 hours and had to leave almost all of their possessions behind. Los Angeles has always been a place that forever asks, “What does the past have to do with me?” And with every new redevelopment project our history and our heritage is razed, bulldozed, remade, covered up and or otherwise obliterated from memory. Los Angeles has gotten particularly good at it, since institutions lose institutional memory the way a man with a hole in his pocket loses money. The Port of Los Angeles was considering a plan to demolish the old StarKist Cannery this past December. San Pedro residents with ties that go back generations with the cannery made their voices heard and demanded the building be preserved and repurposed. The project would involve demolition of the main building (Plant No. 4) and the northern and southern portions of the East Plant and a water-side dock. The 16.5-acre parcel sits on Terminal Island amid a heavily industrialized area. The port’s environmental study determined that the site did not qualify for historic status based standards for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, the California Register of Historic Resources and the Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. This move sparked concern for the remaining buildings of Japan Town on Terminal Island. Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council member, Gina Lumbruno, had taken an interest in the building over the past year and researched the backgrounds of many of the pre World War II properties still standing on Terminal Island. “The port deemed Japan Town’s only buildings remaining are on Tuna Street from addresses 700 through 744,” Gina explained. “The Port’s master plan called for knocking