Life With Iron Giants: Squeaky Wheels and Small Victories

Our park - before construction began.....

Going up against the Port of Los Angeles is as mythically challenging as it gets. David and Golaith time, except in this case, David had his slingshot taken away in an earlier skirmish and is left on the battlefield with nothing but his courage and a lot of bravado. "How's it going, Golaith, old buddy? Hey, that's my head you're tearing off....."

Despite the documented carcinogenic fallout from industrial pollutants that for the better part of a century poured into San Pedro, Wilmington, and all cities north (including you folks up in the Westside), decades more went by before the Port took responsibility for its wrongdoing and started to clean up its act. Too many mega-interests in the financial, political, global manufacturing, and labor spheres, were caught up in a bob and weave dance of conflicting self-interests to worry much about the deaths and shortened lifespans that were a result of our free market system. But hey, we still had lots of landfill-bound junk from China coming in like there was no tomorrow. Talk about uber-denial.

In the past month, we reached a landmark of sorts. The journey started over 20 years ago when some of the local citizenry (mainly those with downtown business interests) thought it would be a good idea if the Port actually did something with the industrial wasteland tthat separated San Pedro's downtown from the water. Ports O'Call, a leasee of the Port, once a thriving dockside retail and restaurant tourist attraction, had fallen into dingy disrepair, the entire place was a sad mess.

Langston Hughes asks what happens to a dream deferred. Does it dry up, like a raisin in the sun? That raisin was as withered as it could get around here. But in the last decade, the blood, sweat and tears of many have begun to bring that raisin back to life. Perhaps the start of this change began when huge multi-national conglomerate, China Shipping, peititioned to build a larger berth in the Port, along with mega-storage for containers. Environmental groups got involved (thanks to those dismal pollution studies) and supported assorted squeaky wheels in the community, and during the contentious debate that followed, some of the most significant cracks appeared in the wall of resistance built by the Port.

A large sum of money (in the multiple millions) was set aside for what they call 'mitigations', kind of a trade-off system. This included new parks, money for waterfront improvements, etc. Some of the money went to form a new elected body (PCAC) made up of local citizens and Port staffers, with the purpose of transparency and input on all matters pertaining to POLA. The City of L.A. was making its own changes in local representation - Neighborhood Councils were created through a charter, with the purpose of adding more in-depth discussion and direct input from communities on issues affecting them.

All of this happened before I got here, but I jumped into the fray because the job of watchdogging an entity like the Port is never done. The Bridge to Breakwater project, an ambitious 1.5 billion dollar investment, was unveiled this fall and all of us squeaky wheels (past and present) jammed into a local gymnasium to find out just how much impact we'd had.

What The Port wanted:

• Bridge to Breakwater billion-dollar development of parkland and interconnecting boardwalks from Vincent Thomas Bridge to Cabrillo Beach
• lots of concrete parking structures
• disconnect between waterfront and downtown San Pedro
• new paint for ageing Ports O'Call
• mega liner ships parked in front of the town beach
• permanent street closures, parking nightmares during tourist surges

What we got:

• Bridge to Breakwater billion-dollar development of parkland and interconnecting boardwalks from Vincent Thomas Bridge to Cabrillo Beach
• Real development funds for Ports O'Call refurbishment
• underground parking structures covered with grass rooftops
• removal of acres of parking lots - converted into parkland and boardwalk
• mega liner berths postponed until further study
• construction of 7th Street people pier, connecting to downtown businesses
• electric powered transport for passengers travelling to outer harbor berths (if constructed)
• LEED-certified green building practices and energy efficiency in all new construction

And, one last thing. The big dirt pile at the end of our street, once a home to oil storage tanks, was in debate for 10 years. The Port wanted to build condos (block our view), research institute (better but not great), shopping mall (yikes!), but the scrappy folks in the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council helped secure a new park for this acreage. The park, under construction since we moved in two years ago, will have it's grand opening in December. The trees are small, plantings, new, but it is a hell of a long way from the tank farm Bob used to play in when he was a kid.

Things are looking up.

The new park is pictured below...