AT LENGTH-Some years ago, I called Los Angeles the "Athens of the Pacific" and I'm sure John Papadakis and a few other Greeks liked this metaphor. With Mayor Eric Garcetti's recent trip to Asia, Los Angeles’ designation as the capital of Pacific Rim trade is only enhanced by the fact that President Barack Obama was there before him, committing this nation to the Pacific Rim market as he negotiated trade deals with China.
Most Angelenos are only vaguely aware that the city is connected to a port, let alone the Port of Los Angeles. For those who are aware, know that some 42 percent of all cargo entering this country comes via the Los Angeles or Long Beach industrial port complex making the twin ports the largest in the nation. Needless to say, they are acutely aware of the ports’ importance to the region and national economy.
As such, nothing connected to these two ports gets done without there being some "economic imperative" or expenditures driven by the mitigation of that imperative. The prime examples of this are the Alameda Corridor, the China Shipping Terminal and the Gerald Desmond Bridge replacement.
If the Ports O' Call waterfront development were an "infrastructure" to trade and commerce, it would have been built yesterday with bond money paid off sometime tomorrow. But it's not.
The recently released "Ports O' Call Redevelopment Financial Analysis" concluded that, "the Developer’s Initial Concept is not financially feasible as a result of the projected developer subsidy required to support a large scale Themed Attraction anchor.”
However, the Ports O’ Call analysis further concludes that a medium scale themed attraction anchor combined with a retail, dining and entertainment development can be a financially feasible development concept and recommends pursuing this concept with a total built square footage of about 215,000 inclusive of all development components.
The problem is that after the Port of Los Angeles overspent on developing the automation at the TraPac terminal, the Board of Harbor Commissioners and port staff are both a bit shy of pursuing grandiose plans and are short on capital.
The phrase “deep pockets but short fingers” comes to mind. Yet, if there were some overarching economic imperative to build such a grand concept, perhaps with other people’s money, it would be built. Grand architecture only comes by way of grand civic enterprise. The examples of this are plentiful in California, starting with the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco built in 1915.
Built as a group of temporary structures, the Palace of Fine Arts survives nearly a century after it was built. Similarly, the buildings in San Diego’s Balboa Park were constructed as part of the California-Pacific International Exposition in the same year and was reused in 1936.
Likewise, our own Los Angeles Coliseum, built for the 1932 Olympics and reused for the 1984 games is another one of these civic structures that if not for some overarching imperative would never have been built but has constantly been in use for the benefit of the people of Los Angeles for more than 80 years.
What I'm hinting at here is that without some greater purpose — some grand enterprise like a Pacific-Rim International Exposition, supported by Garcetti, attended by Obama or his successor, promoting this port as the capital of Pacific Rim trade — nothing grand will be built.
What I'm saying is that not only is the feasibility study probably accurate for the conditions and investment mentality at present, but that the Los Angeles Waterfront Alliance plan probably isn't grand enough to change the economic imperative to build it.
Think about it. With all of this attention on Asian trade and tourism and considering the immense pressure our port are under to compete for business, the creation of an international exposition on our waterfront would begin to fulfill POLA’s mission impossible.
Furthermore, if much of this construction were funded by our trading partners and shipping companies along with state and federal government help–ostensively to promote trade–the cost to both the developer and POLA would moderate.
At the same time, creating this kind of international draw might even cause the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to move on its long delayed plan to connect LAX to the San Pedro Cruise terminal. This would then spike interest in the private sector to develop all of those vacant properties along Harbor Boulevard, even further supporting the feasibility of the Ports O' Call site. All of this, in the end, supports the other components on the waterfront like Crafted, AltaSea, the USS Iowa and the existing businesses that remain both in the downtown and on the main channel.
Some might call this a grand flight of imagination. Others just might say it's lunacy. But in the end, if you want to build something really grand on this waterfront, you have to have a large enough civic vision of why it should be built — an economic imperative so compelling as to be undeniable.
What we are missing from both the port and LA Waterfront Alliance is a vision big enough to encompass Los Angeles' future in the sphere of Pacific Rim economics as it relates to this Main Channel site. We should not be satisfied with just being the "door mat" for global economics, nor tolerant of billions of trade dollars passing through these ports without it flowing through the economies of the surrounding region. And yet, all of this needs to be done in a way that is both sustainable to both the people and the environment.
(James Preston Allen is the Publisher of Random Lengths News, the Los Angeles Harbor Area's only independent newspaper. He is also a guest columnist for the California Courts Monitor and is the author of "Silence Is Not Democracy- Don't listen to that man with the white cap on he might say something that you agree with!" He was elected to the presidency of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council in 2014 and been engaged in the civic affairs of CD 15 for more than 35 years. More of Allen … and other views and news at: randomlengthsnews.com where this column was first posted.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 97
Pub: Dec 2, 2014
