Things to read from the past week:
Amoeba Music Sets Opening Date for New Hollywood Location After Year of Closure "The opening date for the transplanted store, slated in pre-COVID conditions for last fall, will be April 1. But every day may be Record Store Day for a while, as least as lines go, given the pent-up demand to check out the new digs, or even to just access the store’s stock at all, since the old location shut down for good earlier than expected when L.A. went into lockdown last March." (Variety)
A Bridge Home shelterCity of Los Angeles
The Steep Cost Of Building More Shelters "When Los Angeles embarked on its latest effort to build more shelters in 2018, officials (and contracting documents) anticipated people moving through the sites in about three months....Reality, of course, is far less efficient..." (Home for Who)
E-Bike Manufacturers Are Rethinking Los Angeles. Here's What They See "As Los Angeles and the world emerges from the worst days of the pandemic, interest in electric bikes is surging, with several Southern California e-bike startups recently announcing new funding and expansions. The surge derives from several trends that emerged during the pandemic, including a rise in the popularity of bikes, a move toward clean transportation technology and the boom in ecommerce and deliveries." (dot LA)
California agencies will reap windfall from Biden infrastructure plan — if it gets traction "A Biden initiative expected to pour up to $3 trillion into repairing America’s decrepit infrastructure and funding other programs has sparked a scramble across the nation for the federal funds — with California expecting to reap the biggest piece....The potential federal bounty opens the door to a list of ambitious projects: electrifying the Burbank-to-Anaheim passenger rail system, straightening the Los Angeles-to-San Diego rail line to cut travel time, and building a 1.3-mile tunnel to extend a passenger line to downtown San Francisco." (LA Times)
Purple Line extension mapMetro
Metro Expects to Finish Purple Line Extension Section One Tunneling This Week "Metro is extending its Purple Line (now renamed the D Line) subway westward in three sections. The $3 billion section one (WPLE1) will extend the line 3.9 miles under Wilshire Boulevard from Wilshire/Western Station to La Cienega Boulevard at the edge of Beverly Hills. WPLE1 construction began construction in 2014. The project is currently 68 percent complete and anticipated to open to the public in 2024." (Streetsblog LA)
It’s the endgame for the Echo Park homeless encampment "A homeless encampment that took over a large swath of Echo Park for more than a year appeared on the brink of extinction Thursday as city officials fenced off the area and police prepared to remove the relatively few remaining campers, some of whom insisted on their right to live in the park." (LA Times)
Opinion: How did Echo Park become so stratified with landed gentry and poverty? There was a plan 50 years ago "Exactly 50 years ago, Echo Park found itself at a similar inflection point — this time with white homeowners pitted against working class Latino renters who were desperate for affordable housing. That battle was laid out in excruciating and blunt detail in a 1971 story by L.A. Times reporter Dial Torgerson, who did not hold back saying the quiet parts about race and class dynamics out loud." (LA Times)
LA affordable housing developer saves time and money on project for formerly homeless tenants "Eight one-bedroom and studio-size units is a drop in the bucket in terms of LA’s homelessness crisis, with at least 41,000 people living on the city’s streets or in shelters, according to the latest count. But this project is special not for its size or design, but because of its relatively cheap cost. This bungalow court was built for less than half the cost of a typical permanent supportive housing project, and in a fraction of the time. With a total budget of around $1.6 million, the development by the nonprofit Restore Neighborhoods LA breaks down to about $225,000 per unit. Compare that to an average price of more than $500,000 for a new unit of homeless housing in the City of LA" (KCRW)
Rendering of two-way protected bike lanes on Sunset BoulevardSunset 4 All
Could changing "door zone" bike lanes on Sunset Boulevard mean safer riding? "Under the arrangement that Sunset4All is proposing, both bike lanes would be relocated to the same side of the street. They would run between parked cars and the curb, not next to traffic." (The Eastsider)
116 Downtown L.A. Businesses Shuttered by the Pandemic, Many Permanently Twenty years and $34 billion dollars into its extreme makeover, downtown Los Angeles was upscaling fast. The changes brought back luxuries not seen in the area for generations. But a former check-cashing joint on Main Street that had morphed into a fancy French bakery suddenly joined hundreds of other neighborhood businesses that closed in 2020. Here’s a snapshot of the retail devastation one year into COVID-19. (L.A. Magazine)
City Place Long Beach Gets New Owners New York-based Turnbridge Equities, Newport Beach-based Waterford Property Co. and Beverly Hills-based Monument Square Investment Group have acquired City Place Long Beach. Plans for the 14-acre site could include the addition of new buildings and the repositioning of existing structures. (LA Business Journal)
Rendering of the Go For Broke developmentLTSC
City Council OKs Expansion of Go For Broke Ground Lease "The City Council then passed the motion unanimously, paving the way for construction of affordable housing and an education center on the southeast corner of Temple and Aiso, just north of Union Center for the Arts." (Rafu Shimpo)
Metro Board Approves $36M for Transit Policing Overruns, Plus Safety Alternatives Next Year "At a time when many municipalities and agencies are rethinking their roles in systemic injustice, police brutality, and making Black lives matter, Metro keeps upping the money it pays to police." (Streetsblog LA)
