Good to see development moving to this area of LA
https://la.curbed.com/2017/6/6/15722...king-phase-one
Jordan Downs redevelopment: Construction finally starts on ‘beautiful new’ apartments
The public housing complex will be transformed—but some residents are still uncertain about the future
BY JENNA CHANDLER@JENNAKCHANDLER JUN 6, 2017, 8:45AM PDT
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A rendering of the type of housing that will be built on Century Boulevard. Renderings courtesy of Bridge Housing
To the beat of the the David Starr Jordan High School drum line, city leaders and developers plunged shovels into dirt off 99th and Laurel in Watts on Monday afternoon, ceremoniously marking the start of construction to rebuild Jordan Downs.
In the first phase of this massive makeover, the city of Los Angeles and developer Bridge Housing will erect 115 apartments next to the neglected public housing complex in South Los Angeles, where thousands of the city’s poorest residents live.
“We’ve got a housing crisis. We need to build more units, and that starts right here, right now, today,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. “Current Jordan Down residents will be able to move into these beautiful new residences ... and we’re not just building more housing, we’re building a community.”
Built for factory workers during WWII, Jordan Downs was converted to low-income housing in the 1950s. It weathered the crack cocaine epidemic and gang warfare that decimated South LA but has been neglected for years. Today, it’s almost barren of landscaping, an “island,” as described by Garcetti, of dilapidated stucco buildings separated from the rest of Watts; its nearest grocery store, a Food 4 Less, is 1 mile away.
City officials said that will change.
Their goal is to create a mixed income, “vibrant urban village.” Fully built, it will be comprised of at least 710 new apartments and townhomes, 9 acres of green space, and a community center that Los Angeles City Councilmember Joe Buscaino hinted Monday may be designed by a “world recognized” architect. There will also be a grocery store and shops and restaurants on Alameda Street and Century Boulevard, which will be extended by a half-mile to connect Jordan Downs to the rest of the neighborhood.
Garcetti said they are building a “new main street” for Watts, so money will be kept local in black- and Latino-owned businesses.
City officials said residents will not be displaced during construction—and they’ll have new job opportunities, with 30 percent of the construction workforce coming from Watts.
The first 115 units will be reserved for tenants who earn 50 percent or less than Los Angeles County’s median income, which is $64,30 this year. Of those units, 72 will be reserved for current residents, and their rents will not increase, according to Jenny Scanlin, director of development at the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.
“There will be no change in how much they pay,” she said. “It’s still hard for them to believe.”
Aerial view of the first phase of the rebuilding of Jordan Downs. Renderings courtesy of Bridge Housing
Jordan Downs opened without fanfare in 1955. While the mood was celebratory at Monday’s groundbreaking, behind the scenes, residents are nervous, said Thelmy Perez, coordinator at the nonprofit LA Human Right to Housing Collective, which works directly with Jordan Downs residents.
“There’s a sense of uncertainty,” she said.
That’s in large part because of concerns over soil contamination on the 20-acre swath where the first phase of redevelopment will be built. For about six decades, it was used for steel manufacturing and metal processing, then by a trucking company that stored engine oil, diesel, gasoline, and paint thinner on the property, according to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.
In 2011, according to KPCC, three years after the city purchased the land, the soil tested positive for toxins that can cause cancer, including lead, arsenic, cadmium, and polychlorinated biphenyls.
In January, after the city removed hundreds of thousands of tons of soil from the site, state regulators concluded the area where the 115 homes will be constructed had been adequately cleaned up and did not “contain chemicals at concentrations which would could pose a risk” to future residents.
Perez says residents are worried about toxins that have seeped into old Jordan Downs.
Lead concentrations from 14 of 30 samples taken from Jordan Downs three years ago exceeded the California Human Health Screening Level for residential properties. State regulators, however, issued a decision that, “no further action was necessary,” because the levels were, “similar to those found in urban areas of Los Angeles.”
Since then, residents have pressed for more sampling. Their fears were heightened this spring when the Los Angeles Unified School District filed a lawsuit against the housing authority in an effort to get it to pay for a three-year clean-up of lead and arsenic from soil at neighboring David Starr Jordan High School.
“Some of our own investigation showed that the very identical contamination at the property had spread ... onto the high school property,” attorney Barry Groveman told the Los Angeles Times.
According to the Times, the lawsuit claims the housing authority told the school district in 2016, “that it would not investigate contaminant levels beyond its property line because such an investigation could put potential federal funding [for the redevelopment project] at risk.”
Perez says Jordan Downs residents who are concerned about contamination are hesitant to move out in order to protect their health, because they would lose their spots in the new development.
“They have been given a guarantee that they can move into one of those new units, but the caveat is that they’re not allowed to temporarily leave during construction,” she said.
“We don’t want to stop the development. We believe people should have beautiful, clean housing. But if residents are getting sick while development is happening, they should have the ability to move out and come back when it’s ready,” Perez said.
Speaking through a translator to the crowd gathered for Monday’s groundbreaking, Amanda Valle, president of the Jordan Downs Resident Advisory Council, was only enthusiastic. She recalled that about two years ago, a reporter asked her what her vision was for Jordan Downs.
He chuckled, she said, when she told him that she dreamed of Jordan Downs becoming “something like Santa Monica.”
“This dream today is a reality,” Valle said.
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