“It’s just another way that we can’t own our neighborhood and feel safe and quiet here because literally you have something flying over your house all day long, forever, I guess.” said Tany Ling, a singer who offers private lessons at the home she and her sister bought in 2012.
McCourt entities are buying up properties in the neighborhood, but the Lings don’t want to move. They started StoptheGondola.org to fight the project.
— The Los Angeles Times
Frank McCourt, who owned the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2004 to 2011, began proposing the $125 million project back in 2018. The initiative has come up against stiff resistance, especially from those associated with the Los Angeles National Historic Park, which abuts Chinatown.
Their side got help recently from a nonprofit called The California Endowment after it filed a writ of mandate in county superior court this week alleging that the Metropolitan Transit Authority chief Phil Washington had cut a sweetheart deal with McCourt’s LA ART company while acting as a lone intermediary. McCourt has maintained from the get-go that its plan is meant to reduce the legendary traffic caused by Dodger home games, but opponents say the overall effect will only wind up crippling the neighborhood while “[reaping] profit through the occupation on public land.”
“Although the need for increased transit infrastructure is significant, the Gondola Project as proposed functions as a private tourist attraction, not a public transportation line to serve Metro riders,” part of the filing read, adding that the venture was nothing more than a “for-profit income generator.”
3 Comments
Anything other than preserving a dilapidated and slum-lorded houses in a city in need of transportation solutions and density is "gentrification" - or a way for meaningless politicians to seem important and gain power by creating a victim class.
Next time use fewer words to say nothing.
It's almost as if Sportsball stadiums only exist to enrich the Sportsball leadership as opposed to the neighborhoods they consistently tell lies to in order to drum up support.
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