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Tag: project

  • Judge halts construction of massive warehouse project after scores of homes demolished

    Judge halts construction of massive warehouse project after scores of homes demolished

    A Southern California developer must halt construction of a controversial industrial park in San Bernardino County that has displaced scores of homes, after a judge found flaws in the project’s environmental impact report.

    County supervisors in late 2022 green-lighted an industrial real estate firm’s proposal to remove 117 homes and ranches in rural Bloomington to make way for more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space. Several environmental and community groups sued the county soon after, alleging that the approval of the Bloomington Business Park violated numerous regulations set out in state environmental and housing laws.

    Nearly two years later, and after more than 100 homes have already been leveled, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Donald Alvarez ruled last week that the county’s review of the project did not conform with the state law intended to inform decision-makers and the public about the potential environmental harms of proposed developments. He said construction of the warehouse project must stop while the county redoes the report in a manner that complies with the law.

    A San Bernardino County spokesperson declined to comment on the ruling because it is the subject of active litigation. The developer, Orange County-based Howard Industrial Partners, said it would appeal portions of the ruling and predicted that delays to the overall project would be short-lived.

    The 213-acre industrial park came with trade-offs familiar to communities in California’s Inland Empire that are being asked to shoulder the sprawling distribution centers integral to the storage, packaging and delivery of America’s online shopping orders.

    The environmental impact report found that the development would have “significant and unavoidable” impacts on air quality. But it also would bring jobs to the majority Latino community of 23,000 residents, and the developer pledged to provide millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements.

    And because the warehouse project would be about 50 feet from Zimmerman Elementary, the developer agreed to pay $44.5 million to the Colton Joint Unified School District in a land swap that would usher in a state-of-the-art school nearby.

    For Bloomington residents and community advocates who have been fighting the explosive growth of the warehouse industry in the Inland Empire, the court’s decision is being viewed as a victory.

    Ana Gonzalez, executive director of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said her organization has challenged a couple of warehouse approvals annually for the past five years. The lawsuits typically end in settlements that award the community extra protections, such as air filters and HVAC systems for nearby homes. She said she’s never before seen construction stopped in its tracks.

    “To see the way this one turned out just gives us hope, and it ignites that resilience that our community needed to keep fighting,” Gonzalez said.

    Still, she said, the timing is bittersweet.

    “I don’t know at this point if we could ever get the homes that were there back,” Gonzalez said. “To see the community being wiped out in Bloomington is really heartbreaking.”

    The ruling raises broader questions about the rigor of San Bernardino County’s process for approving warehouse projects, which have become a mainstay of the county’s economy. While proponents say the developments bring much needed jobs to the region, many residents living in their shadows lament the pollution, traffic and neighborhood disruption.

    In Bloomington’s case, the project in question fractured the community. Some people who sold their homes to make way for the industrial park say they got a good price and were happy to move on, while many of the neighbors left behind see a future with 24-hour truck traffic and a hollowing out of the community’s rural culture.

    Alondra Mateo, a community organizer for another plaintiff in the suit, the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, said the many residents who have spoken out in public hearings, raising concerns about the environmental impacts of the Bloomington Business Park, were told that the county was adhering to the required environmental review process.

    “For the court to take a look at all the evidence and then agree with us,” Mateo said, “is such a big, powerful win to our community that has honestly been gaslit for so long.”

    Candice Youngblood, an attorney with the nonprofit environmental law group Earthjustice, which represented the plaintiffs, called the county’s environmental report “deficient.” She said the court’s findings are “a testament to the fact that this document reflects cutting corners at the expense of the community and in the interest of industry.”

    In a nearly 100-page ruling, Alvarez determined that the county had violated the California Environmental Quality Act by not analyzing renewable energy options that might be available or appropriate for the project, and not adequately analyzing construction noise impacts.

    Alvarez found the county failed to analyze a reasonable range of alternatives to the project; and failed to sufficiently analyze how air emissions would impact public health. Despite finding the project would have unavoidable impacts on air quality, the county determined using zero-emission trucks would be an economically infeasible form of mitigation — a finding that Alvarez deemed “not supported by substantial evidence.”

    But he ruled against the plaintiffs on several issues, rejecting their arguments that the county failed to analyze the project’s traffic impacts; failed to adequately analyze environmental justice issues; improperly analyzed operational noise impacts; and abused its discretion by failing to translate key portions of the report into Spanish.

    Youngblood, with Earthjustice, said the ruling forces the county to restart the environmental review process, including providing community members with new opportunities to weigh in on the project’s impacts.

    Mike Tunney, Howard Industrial Partners’ vice president for development, said the company was “pleased” by the court’s ruling upholding portions of the environmental report. He said the ruling would result in “minor revisions” to the report, which the county would “quickly address.”

    “We are committed to making the necessary adjustments to address the issues identified by the Court,” Tunney said in a statement. “We will simultaneously pursue an appeal of portions of the Court’s ruling that threaten a $30 million major flood control project which is already under construction to prevent ongoing flooding that has negatively impacted the community for decades.”

    This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

    Rebecca Plevin

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  • Affordable housing on church parking lots? A new law makes it easier to build

    Affordable housing on church parking lots? A new law makes it easier to build

    The Rev. Paul Anthony Daniels knows the names and life stories of the people who sleep in their cars near St. Mary, a century-old church in Palms.

    In the past, homeless people have spent the night in St. Mary’s Sunday school room.

    So it wasn’t a huge leap for Daniels to think about building affordable housing on the church property.

    A place to sleep, bathe and cook “provides a basic dignity” that can turn around someone’s life and also help the neighborhood, said Daniels.

    “The unhoused are a part of this community,” he added. “Not only in the sense that we shelter them, but also in the sense that they live literally around the property.”

    Across Los Angeles, some religious leaders are sizing up their own properties, encouraged by new legislation making it easier to develop the land.

    A California law that went into effect Jan. 1 allows affordable housing projects on property owned by churches, temples, mosques and other religious institutions to bypass an extensive review process and to be built in single-family neighborhoods. The city of Los Angeles is considering even more exemptions.

    An aerial view of St. Mary in Palms, center, where some of the land owned by the church may eventually be leased for affordable housing.

    (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

    In L.A., which has little vacant land, sky-high rents and a homeless population that topped 45,000 at last count, affordable housing proponents view religious institutions — often land-rich but cash-poor — as an untapped resource.

    For religious leaders, building their own housing could be a way to fulfill their missions of helping needy people. And with many congregations shrinking as Americans become less religious, revenue from the developments would help make up for dwindling collection boxes.

    But some real estate experts question whether many religious organizations will ultimately seek to build, considering the buy-in required from their members and governing boards. Years of construction near their sanctuaries could be a deterrent, as could opposition from neighbors.

    Some cities, including Chino, Rancho Palos Verdes, Santa Clarita and Thousand Oaks, opposed the new state law as it was being debated in Sacramento. Then-Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse said it would strip local governments of their power to control development, “overriding carefully crafted, locally informed plans.”

    Leaders at St. Mary, an Episcopal church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, are in the early stages of studying the idea. The small congregation is close-knit, with a few dozen people attending a typical Sunday service in the diminutive, brown-shingled church. An affordable housing project would enrich church coffers, probably through leasing fees paid by the developer.

    The St. Mary property includes two main buildings, a house and six parking spaces on a narrow strip of land in a neighborhood of apartment buildings. Daniels, who has led St. Mary since 2022, said it’s too soon to say where on the property the new housing would go.

    A man sits on a pew in a church.

    The Rev. Paul Anthony Daniels, the rector of St. Mary in Palms.

    (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

    In South Los Angeles, with its abundance of historically Black churches, many congregations are still reeling from the pandemic and a decline in attendance.

    Regina Fair, a board member at Bethel AME-Los Angeles, said her church draws a few hundred people on Sundays but has cut back to a single sermon.

    Like other churches, Bethel AME, which was founded in 1921, relied on livestreaming during the pandemic lockdown and uses social media to reach younger people. That all means fewer dollars in the collection plate.

    “People became OK with doing church in their home, on their couch,” Fair said. “And when you’re not in the church, it makes a big impact on the giving.”

    Bethel AME, which faces a stretch of South Western Avenue lined with businesses and apartment buildings, has embarked on a multiyear plan to develop affordable housing on its parking lot.

    The 53-unit project, which benefited from city rules intended to fast-track affordable housing, will cater to some of the homeless men who sleep in the church on cots during the winter. The church also plans to build housing on two nearby parcels it owns.

    Logos Faith Housing, which is co-developing the property, was started by a pastor to help churches build affordable housing. Bethel is leasing the land to a collection of backers in what the church’s leader, the Rev. Kelvin T. Calloway, describes as a “perfect model” to bring in revenue over a long period.

    Calloway has seen gentrification change other neighborhoods in South L.A., leaving fewer worshipers in church pews. That isn’t happening much yet in Bethel AME’s neighborhood of Manchester Square, but “it’s a real possibility,” he said.

    A man looks up a a building under construction.

    Pastor Martin Porter, managing partner of Logos Faith Development LLC, a real estate development company focused on partnering with religious entities, on the parking lot of Bethel AME Church in Los Angeles.

    (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

    “Christianity is in crisis,” said Logos founder Pastor Martin Porter, who leads Quinn African Methodist Episcopal in Moreno Valley. “You’re seeing a lot of empty pews. The natural question is: What do we do with excess property that’s not being used?”

    Bethel AME didn’t need the new state law, sponsored by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), to develop its property.

    But in L.A., at least 600 sites owned by faith-based groups in single-family neighborhoods are now eligible to build affordable housing, according to the city Planning Department. City officials couldn’t provide information about whether any applications have been filed under the law in the last eight months.

    Wiener predicted it will take a few years for a substantial number of projects to launch — particularly as religious institutions figure out how to approach the opportunity.

    “They’re typically not major financial players,” he told The Times. “They’re a church or synagogue, not a development company.”

    “This is a big deal,” said Pastor John Oh, project manager of faith in housing at L.A. Voice, a community organization that supported the law.

    Oh sees it as a potential “domino” that could lead to more zoning changes in single-family neighborhoods, which have long been treated by political leaders as off-limits for multi-unit development.

    The city of L.A.’s planning department has put forward a version that, unlike Wiener’s law, does not require paying construction workers prevailing wages, or, on larger projects, providing them with healthcare.

    The proposal, which is expected to come before the City Council in the next six months, is meant to appease affordable housing developers who say that the higher wages and benefits can add 30% to their costs.

    Labor unions, including the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, are opposed.

    Pete Rodriguez, the brotherhood’s western district vice president, called the proposal “outrageous” and suggested it could worsen the homelessness crisis by impoverishing workers.

    “When will the city of L.A. realize that so many of our problems, from homelessness to budget deficits, are caused by the simple fact that too many Angelenos cannot make ends meet?” he said.

    Wiener declined to comment on the city’s proposal. He said his law prioritizes protections for construction workers, who can be targets of wage theft.

    Some development experts privately question whether religious entities in single-family neighborhoods will want to build affordable housing, in the face of possible resistance.

    In Laguna Beach, some residents are protesting a church’s plans to build affordable housing under Wiener’s law. A petition against the development on the property of Neighborhood Congregational Church has collected about 1,500 signatures.

    “It affects the entire community by altering the neighborhood’s character and exacerbating existing issues such as traffic congestion and parking shortages,” the petition said.

    But Bishop Lovester Adams, who heads Greater New St. Matthew Missionary Baptist Church in a single-family residential area in South L.A., isn’t shying away. He called Wiener’s law and the city proposal “a game changer.”

    Adams, who is also a senior associate at Logos Development, said he can’t afford to build housing on his church’s parking lot at 36th and Crawford streets unless the city passes the labor exemption.

    The church, which dates to the 1960s, is nestled between homes and duplexes. Church leaders regularly give out food and toys to needy residents.

    Attendance has fallen since the pandemic, Adams said. Sunday services draw 50 to 70 people, who fill fewer than half the seats. Some older people stay away because of concerns about COVID-19.

    Adams said he wants veterans to live in the new housing: “There is a great need there.”

    A woman stands in a parking lot near buildings.

    IKAR CEO Melissa Balaban stands in the foundation’s parking lot where affordable housing will be developed in Los Angeles.

    (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

    On South Fairfax Avenue in Mid-Wilshire, the Jewish congregation IKAR is building an affordable housing complex for formerly homeless senior citizens on its parking lot.

    The project was built through Mayor Karen Bass’ Executive Directive 1, which fast-tracks affordable housing, said IKAR executive director Melissa Balaban. State legislation pushed by IKAR reduced the amount of required parking.

    Balaban said IKAR isn’t relying on the project, which is being funded by a nonprofit developer, to generate revenue for the congregation.

    “My hope is that what we’re doing isn’t just going to provide 60 homes but hopefully inspire other faith-based communities,” she said.

    In Palms, St. Mary member Julia Bergstrom, 72, is enthusiastic about the idea of affordable housing on the church property.

    She has noticed the number of people living in RVs rise and fall, and she finds the years-long wait for Section 8 housing vouchers to be “immoral.”

    While she worries about changes to the “very beautiful little church” she has attended since 2008, “it doesn’t stop me, and it doesn’t make me sad about the whole thing,” she said.

    Dakota Smith

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  • Project 2025, GOP platform blast California, teeing up critiques of Biden stand-ins

    Project 2025, GOP platform blast California, teeing up critiques of Biden stand-ins

    At the start of Project 2025’s conservative playbook for a second Trump presidency, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts took aim at leaders who he said wield power to “serve themselves first and everyone else a distant second.”

    He mentioned North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un comfortably ruling over an impoverished nation, “billionaire climate activists” flying on private jets while criticizing carbon-emitting cars, and two “COVID-19 shutdown politicians” in California who were seen out and about — at a hair salon and a fancy restaurant — while calling on their constituents to stay home.

    Name-dropping U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Gov. Gavin Newsom in the conservative right’s blueprint for the White House was a way for Roberts to tie them, and California, to the idea that out-of-touch coastal elites are ruining the country.

    That notion — well worn in American politics — appears throughout the Project 2025 plan, a wonky, 900-plus-page manifesto released last year by conservative thought leaders and Trump acolytes.

    The idea is also evoked more subtly in the much snappier, 16-page Republican Party platform spearheaded by Trump and adopted by party officials last week, which criticizes American politicians who “insulated themselves from criticism and the consequences of their own bad actions” while average Americans suffered.

    Roberts and other Heritage Foundation officials were not available for comment. A Heritage Foundation spokesperson said Project 2025 is a product of more than 100 conservative organizations and “does not speak for any candidate or campaign.”

    According to political experts, the conservative strategy of criticizing “woke” liberal ideas, many of which got traction in California, has become particularly useful in the current election cycle, as Trump’s base has proved especially receptive to conservative virtue signaling on issues such as abortion, climate change, guns, immigration and LGBTQ+ rights.

    That strategy will only grow, the experts said, if President Biden comes off the Democratic ticket and is replaced with a California politician such as Newsom or Vice President Kamala Harris, a former senator.

    “This is a vital angle to be hitting,” said Jon Michaels, a constitutional law professor at UCLA with a forthcoming book on right-wing authoritarianism. “California becomes a convenient foil, and the excesses of California are what Republicans can run against.”

    Issues at play

    Conservatives have long cast California — sometimes fairly, other times not — as a failing state crumbling under the weight of out-of-control regulation, crime and homelessness, and the 2024 race has intensified those lines of attack.

    “Instances of California really going in a different direction from what the Republican Party wants is all over the [Project 2025] report — everything from diversity, equity and inclusion, to connections to China, to high tech [companies] to homelessness,” said Bruce Cain, a political science professor at Stanford University. The aim is to portray a state in disorder, an “undemocratic, patronizing state controlled by the high-tech elites completely out of touch with where the rest of America is.”

    Both Project 2025 and the GOP platform envision a second Trump presidency where federal bureaucrats use the powers of the executive branch to beat back an array of California policies — including protections for undocumented immigrants, the environment, unionized workers, those seeking abortions and transgender youth.

    In its phrasing, the GOP platform is at times bombastic — just like Trump, who helped draft it — and lays out a relatively clear framework for how he intends to govern in sharp contrast to California leaders.

    “California becomes a convenient foil, and the excesses of California are what Republicans can run against.”

    — Jon Michaels, constitutional law professor at UCLA

    For example, Los Angeles and other major California cities decline to use their police forces or city personnel to enforce immigration laws. Trump’s platform promises to “cut federal funding” to such jurisdictions.

    California is in the process of reining in oil drilling in the state, with leaders raising concerns about the environmental and health impacts. The platform calls on the nation to “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”

    California requires LGBTQ+-inclusive curricula in schools and the Democrat-controlled state Legislature just passed a law barring school officials from informing parents of kids who identify as transgender at school if the kids don’t want that information shared. The platform says Republicans support “parental rights” and will “defund schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination of our children” or push “radical gender ideology.”

    The Project 2025 plan is even more ardent in its rebuke of California policies.

    Roberts, in his foreword of Project 2025, speaks much of American liberty, but defines it squarely within a Christian nationalist framework, saying the Constitution gives each American the liberty to “live as his Creator ordained” — to “do not what we want, but what we ought.”

    The plan calls on Trump, if elected, to “make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors” — a process that it says should start with deleting all references to queer identities, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” abortion or “reproductive health” from federal legislation and rules.

    Calling California and other liberal states “sanctuaries for abortion tourism,” the plan says the Trump administration should “push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America,” work with Congress to enact antiabortion laws, and mandate state reporting of abortion data to the federal government — including patients’ state of residence and “reason” for receiving a procedure.

    Critics say such actions would empower conservative states that ban abortions to identify and punish women who go to liberal states such as California to have those procedures.

    The party platform does not call for a national abortion ban, which rankled some on the right, but does back state policies restricting it and says Republicans “proudly stand for families and Life.”

    Both plans criticize the nation’s shift to electric vehicles, and Project 2025 says the federal government should rescind a waiver allowing California to set its own clean air standards around fuel economy, which underpins the state’s goal of shifting exclusively to zero-emissions vehicles by 2035.

    The fight ahead

    Although Project 2025 is authored in large part by prominent advisors and former appointees of Trump, he has recently sought to distance himself from the plan.

    In an online post July 5, Trump wrote that he knew “nothing about it,” but also that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” Even so, he wished those behind the plan “luck.”

    “This isn’t Alabama or Mississippi. You are taking on a very powerful state with a lot of resources — and a will to resist.”

    — Bruce Cain, political science professor at Stanford University

    Trump’s campaign referred questions about Project 2025 and the GOP platform, and their relation to California policies, to the Republican National Committee.

    Anna Kelly, a committee spokesperson, said the party platform “contains commonsense policies like cutting taxes, securing the border, ending absurd [electric vehicle] mandates, securing our elections, defending our constitutional rights, and keeping men out of women’s sports” — with the last being an apparent reference to transgender women.

    “If reporters find those principles contradictory to values pushed by California leaders,” Kelly wrote, “maybe it’s time for Democrats to evaluate how their state is run.”

    Democrats, including Biden, have repeatedly tied Trump to Project 2025, saying his claims of distance from it are absurd given how many people in his orbit are leading it. On Tuesday, Harris called out Project 2025 at a campaign event in Las Vegas, noting that it calls for the dissolution of the U.S. Department of Education, cuts to Social Security and a nationwide abortion ban.

    “If implemented, this plan would be the latest attack in Donald Trump’s full-on assault on reproductive freedom,” she said.

    Experts said that if Biden is replaced by Harris or Newsom — who are considered leading candidates amid a swirl of doubt about Biden’s age and ability to defeat Trump — conservative derision about California and its liberal policies will increase, and find a receptive audience in many parts of the country.

    A Times survey earlier this year found that 50% of U.S. adults believe California is in decline, with 48% of Republicans saying it is “not really American.”

    If Trump wins, California is expected to lead the liberal resistance to Trump’s agenda, just as it did during his first term, experts said. Such efforts will be hampered by California’s budget woes and the conservative-leaning Supreme Court, they said, but not undone completely.

    “California will fight back, and it has the means to fight back,” Cain said. “This isn’t Alabama or Mississippi. You are taking on a very powerful state with a lot of resources — and a will to resist.”

    Kevin Rector

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  • ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and Other Must-See Found Footage Films

    ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and Other Must-See Found Footage Films

    Adam Nayman takes a look at some must-see found footage films

    ‌To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the release of The Blair Witch Project, Ringer contributor Adam Nayman takes a look at some must-see found footage films.

    Adam Nayman

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  • Highlights From The Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project 2025’

    Highlights From The Heritage Foundation’s ‘Project 2025’

    Several high-ranking members of Donald Trump’s former administration recently released a stunning, highly detailed document outlining how they would overhaul the federal government should he be reelected president. The following are the biggest takeaways from the Heritage Foundation’s 922-page political playbook designed to bolster Trump’s power.

    Google Announces Everyone’s Got To Chill With These Depressing Inquiries

    Immigration through Ticketmaster: By privatizing immigration, it ensures all immigrants pay the service fee, order processing fee, and the occasional surge pricing fees.
    Dog militia: Every dog will receive a firearm to defend their country from tyrannical oppression.
    A must-try pesto recipe: Included on page 635 of the manifesto is a step-by-step guide for recreating Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts’ irresistible family pasta sauce.
    Official designation of the president as “America’s dad”: Project 2025 includes a chart showing the proposed family tree of the country, which would make Donald Trump the dad and all Americans his kids.
    Replace 30,000 federal employees with Eric Trump: He’ll run the Departments of Energy, Interior, and Labor while the Defense and the Joint Chiefs will be replaced by Tiffany.
    Mandatory embassy status for every McDonald’s: All franchises would be extraterritorial, sovereign lands of the United States of America, regardless of location.
    Bring back Gulags: But with a more American sounding name.

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  • ‘Who’s going to live here?’ What happens when an e-commerce warehouse takes out your neighborhood

    ‘Who’s going to live here?’ What happens when an e-commerce warehouse takes out your neighborhood

    BLOOMINGTON, Calif.  — 

    Benjamin and Christine Granillo bought their 2.25-acre property in San Bernardino County four decades ago. They built their home by hand and surrounded it with a lush grove of avocado, orange and lemon trees.

    “We thought we’d be here for the rest of our life,” Christine Granillo, 77, said as she tended to her trees on a recent afternoon.

    But their neighborhood in unincorporated Bloomington is rapidly transforming, as developers convert the 10 Freeway and its adjacent communities into a logistics corridor connecting goods shipped into Southern California ports with online shoppers across the nation. An industrial real estate company based in Orange County is demolishing 117 homes and ranches in rural Bloomington to make way for more than 2 million square feet of warehousing space. The project will serve as yet another distribution center dedicated to storing and moving the vast array of products consumers want delivered to their doorsteps.

    Benjamin and Christine Granillo, who built their home by hand in rural Bloomington, will soon look out on a sprawling online fulfillment center.

    All the neighbors across the street from the Granillos sold their homes to the developer, and many have already been bulldozed. The Granillos opted not to sell — and now look out their stately front gate at the rubble, soon to be supplanted with a 479,000-square-foot fulfillment center. Their street will become a busy truck route. Next door will be a parking lot with hundreds of truck and trailer stalls.

    Christine Granillo mourns the loss of her neighbors and her view of the San Bernardino Mountains. But, she added, “What can you do about it? There’s really nothing you can do about it.”

    In November 2022, San Bernardino County supervisors voted 4-0 to approve the Bloomington Business Park, a 213-acre industrial park that promises to bring several thousand jobs to Bloomington, a majority Latino community of 23,000 residents.

    The deal came with trade-offs familiar to the Inland Empire communities being asked to shoulder the massive distribution centers integral to America’s online shopping habit: An environmental impact report found the development would have “significant and unavoidable” impacts on air quality. But it would bring jobs to a working-class community in need of them, and Howard Industrial Partners has pledged to provide millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements: new streets with traffic lights and sidewalks; a modern sewer system in an area that still relies on aging septic systems.

    And because the warehouse project would be about 50 feet from Zimmerman Elementary School, the developer agreed to pay $44.5 million to the Colton Joint Unified School District in a land swap that will usher in a state-of-the-art school nearby.

    A man sits in front of a home undergoing demolition.

    Joaquin Castillejos, with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, advocates for residents whose neighborhoods are targeted for warehouse projects. But he said people are feeling the impact of years of poor planning.

    Gary Grossich, a member of Bloomington’s Municipal Advisory Council, recommended that supervisors support the development. Surrounding cities like Rialto and Fontana are embracing warehouse development, he said, and this was an opportunity for Bloomington to reap the benefits of a booming industry.

    “The warehouse industry was the hot market,” he said, “and that was the only way that myself and others could see that we were going to get to the greater good, which is to get more sheriff’s deputies, more public safety, more services for our community and eventually balance our books.”

    Mike Tunney, vice president of development at Howard Industrial Partners, said the developer shares those goals. “Overcoming these types of challenges and opportunities are the fundamental tenets of our development philosophy,” Tunney said.

    But the project has left Bloomington fractured, with a stinging sense of winners and losers: Many who sold their homes say they got a good price and were happy to move on, while many of the neighbors left behind see a future with more concrete and semi-trailers and a hollowing out of the community’s rural culture.

    Two young women pose outside a horse corral.

    Esmeralda Tabares, left, calls the conversion of rural neighborhoods to industrial developments “just a complete shift in the culture and lifestyle” of Bloomington.

    Esmeralda Tabares, 23, part of a group called Concerned Neighbors of Bloomington, described the transition from rural residential to industrial development as “just a complete shift in the culture and lifestyle we have.” Many Bloomington residents ride horses; her family owns a plant nursery.

    She questions why San Bernardino County is relying on a developer to provide the community with critical infrastructure such as sidewalks and sewers.

    “It’s just easier for them to shift to a warehouse and say, ‘Well, we’re going to let them come in and take over your community,’” she said. “But now what community is that going to be? Because they’re taking people out, and soon who’s going to go to the school? Who’s going to live here?”

    Agents associated with Howard Industrial Partners approached Raquel Diaz several years ago about selling her home in a Bloomington neighborhood a mile south of the 10 Freeway with an offer that wouldn’t go through until the county approved the project.

    She and her family had purchased their home in 2012 for $140,000. It was the first home for her family of five, she said, and they were “super excited.” But the three-bedroom house on Locust Avenue quickly became a nightmare.

    The house flooded whenever it rained. It reeked of moisture, and she and her husband worried about raising young kids amid mold.

    Their street had no sidewalks, but that didn’t stop people from speeding by in their cars. Accidents were alarmingly common, she said. Her kids were forbidden from checking the street-side mailbox or taking out the trash.

    “We ended up with a lemon of a house,” she said. “We were happy to be in Bloomington, and it just didn’t end up working out for us.”

    By the time the county approved the warehouse development, home prices across Southern California had skyrocketed. Diaz said the developer encouraged them to find a home they wanted to buy — even if it cost above the price they had originally negotiated — and to make sure it was on a hill. The company would cover the cost.

    An aerial of empty land where more than 100 homes were razed.

    Unincorporated Bloomington is transforming, as developers look to raze neighborhoods near the 10 Freeway to create a logistics corridor dedicated to online shopping needs.

    They selected a five-bedroom, five-bathroom home in Highland, a nearby suburb at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains, and closed on the property in January 2023 for $1.05 million. The 3,800-square-foot home has a pool and views. It’s on a sewer system, and while their residential street doesn’t have sidewalks, the nearby roads have sidewalks and bike lanes.

    “It still feels unreal where we ended up,” she said. “It’s beautiful. I completely love where I live.”

    Diaz has heard other residents say that homeowners were harassed and pressured to sell. She is adamant that’s not the case.

    “No one is forcing me out,” she said. “It was a blessing to get the opportunity to be able to have a new start.”

    Carolina Rios also saw the developer’s offer as an opportunity.

    Rios and her family paid $225,000 for their Bloomington home and lived there about 13 years. She has fond memories of the three-bedroom house on Laurel Avenue: She threw her daughter’s quinceañera there, and she and her husband were married in the yard.

    But the house was old, and instead of storm drains, the homes on her street had pipes under the driveways that flowed into ditches. The street flooded every time it rained. They had to walk atop pallets and bricks to cross the yard.

    “Across the street, their ditch was 24/7, 365 days a year full of water and mosquitoes and raccoons and snakes and all sorts of fun wildlife to go to the zoo and look at,” she said. “But not in my house, around my kids.”

    She agreed to sell in 2016; she said the developer adjusted the purchase price in 2023 — to $1.4 million — after the county approved the project, in recognition of rising home prices. In late December, she closed on a new house in Riverside with an extra bedroom, a swimming pool and an enclosed patio. She paid $1.2 million in cash.

    She knows some people are opposed to warehouse development, but she says the industry is bringing good jobs. Her oldest children, ages 27 and 24, both work at a FedEx warehouse in Bloomington, where they have flexible hours and get frequent raises, she said.

    A man practices cowboy roping skill.

    Jessie Ortiz practices roping skills in the backyard of his family’s Bloomington home.

    While some homeowners seized on the opportunity to move out of Bloomington, Felipe and Blanca Ortiz felt blindsided when their landlord agreed to sell the ranch home they were renting.

    The Ortizes and their four children have lived on the two-acre property for more than a decade. They’ve maintained their family traditions from the Mexican state of Morelos, raising horses, goats and chickens on their small property.

    They loved riding their horses through the hills behind their home, and regularly traveled to other cities to ride their horses in parades, decked out in traditional Mexican cowboy and cowgirl attire. They organized 100-horse processions as fundraisers for neighbors in need.

    “It’s their entire lives,” Felipe Ortiz said, as he shared TikTok videos of his kids performing on horseback.

    A man and two children inside a horse stable.

    Felipe Ortiz and his family are being evicted from the ranch home they have rented for more than a decade.

    In February, the family got a notice informing them their rental agreement would end in 60 days. It came from a company connected to Timothy Howard of Howard Industrial Partners — the only indication the family had that their rental home had been sold.

    That same day, footage from the Ortiz family’s security camera shows an excavator knocking down the chain link gate in front of the ranch. The two youngest Ortiz kids, ages 6 and 12, were home at the time. The family viewed it as an act of intimidation.

    Tunney, with Howard Industrial Partners, said it was “regrettable” that the previous owner didn’t disclose the sale to the Ortiz family.

    “Additionally, it was not disclosed to us that there were occupants on the property,” Tunney said. “The incident with the excavator was inadvertent as the operator was scheduled to work at a nearby site and confused the addresses.”

    Several months later, the family is still living in the home, waiting out the eviction process. Ortiz says he is struggling to find another property that will accommodate the family of six and their eight horses. As their search wears on, he said, his kids are traumatized. His youngest returns from school each day wondering if their home has been knocked down.

    “Every day, the machines pass by here to knock down homes behind us,” Ortiz said. “And you’re left with the fear that they are coming to knock down our house.”

    A fallen brick chimney sits amid rubble from a demolished home.

    As homes are demolished in rural Bloomington to make way for a warehousing project, the neighbors who remain look out at rubble.

    As the demolitions proceed, a coalition of environmental groups has sued San Bernardino County and Howard Industrial Partners, trying to halt the project. The lawsuit, alleging violations of state environmental and fair housing laws, seeks to vacate the county’s approval and require a more “meaningful” review.

    Adrian Martinez is deputy managing attorney for Earthjustice, the group representing the plaintiffs. He called their effort a key moment in “the fight against the freight industry and its disregard for public health.”

    “There are people who don’t want these warehouses in their communities and they just want to be left with peace,” Martinez said. “I think the inflection point is this kind of misguided notion that to give a community resources, you have to stuff thousands of trucks in the community and air pollution. And there’s no place in the country that this story is more robust than the Inland Empire and Bloomington in particular.”

    A hearing is scheduled for later this month in San Bernardino County Superior Court.

    Two children swing in a hammock while petting their dog.

    “Everyday, the machines pass by here to knock down homes behind us,” Felipe Ortiz says of his family’s plight. “And you’re left with the fear that they are coming to knock down our house.”

    Meanwhile, just a couple miles away, residents in southeastern Bloomington are starting to hear from developers interested in building more warehouses in the area.

    Daniela Vargas, 24, said her parents bought their house there more than two decades ago. For her parents, both Mexican immigrants, it’s a deep source of pride to own a home they could pass down to their four children.

    Vargas’ family raises chickens on their land, but the surrounding area is pockmarked with industry. Just a short drive from the family’s home is another warehouse complex, a railroad and the 10 Freeway.

    Recently, they’ve received phone calls and “strange-looking mail” from developers interested in buying their home, Vargas said: “It looks like a check that says, ‘Here’s X amount of money, call us to make it real.’”

    She said her family doesn’t want to leave, but it feels inevitable that their neighborhood will be the next to transform.

    “Anyone that moves out of Bloomington, it’s all valid reasoning,” Vargas said. “My family is really prideful. But if the decision comes that warehouses are going to be developed here and everybody is leaving, we can’t remain with so much pollution around us, with so much traffic and with no real neighbors or neighborhood amenities.”

    This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

    Rebecca Plevin

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  • Erewhon sues city to stop Sportsmen’s Lodge development in Studio City

    Erewhon sues city to stop Sportsmen’s Lodge development in Studio City

    The owners of Erewhon have filed an environmental lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, the latest attempt by the upscale supermarket chain to stop the planned demolition of Sportsmen’s Lodge hotel in Studio City to make way for a new apartment complex.

    Erewhon operates a store next to the defunct hotel and previously joined with local residents, union officials and others in opposition to a 520-unit residential mixed use development planned to replace the inn that was known to generations of San Fernando Valley residents.

    Plans for the new development took a leap forward last month when the City Council voted 13 to 1 to deny an appeal of the project filed by Erewon’s owners and others, clearing the way for Midwood Investment & Development to demolish the aged hotel at Ventura Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue.

    Midwood is Erewhon’s landlord, having built in 2021 the Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge, an outdoor mall where Erewhon is the anchor tenant among other stores, restaurants and an Equinox gym. The mall replaced a banquet facility that served as a local social center where couples got married and families shared big occasions such as bar mitzvahs.

    The event center and a restaurant opened in 1946 and the hotel in 1962. The hotel permanently closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The landlord got city permission to knock down the 190-room hotel and build the Residences at Sportsmen’s Lodge, which would have 520 apartments, including 78 units of subsidized affordable housing. It would include ground-floor stores and restaurants intended to meld with the Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge.

    Prior to the recent City Council vote, Erewhon, the Studio City Residents Assn. and Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel workers, sought to stop the project by appealing aspects of the city’s review and approval process.

    Some opponents argued that the hotel should be preserved. It was one of the first to unionize in the San Fernando Valley and one of the first union hotels in Los Angeles. Others were concerned about the project’s 97-foot height, the construction noise and the environmental impact.

    After the appeals were rejected, Erewhon’s parent company last week filed a lawsuit in Superior Court demanding that the project approvals be rescinded because the city allegedly failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act as well as other state and local laws. The environmental law in part is intended to increase the public’s awareness of the potential environmental effects of proposed developments and other projects.

    The city violated the act by forgoing an exhaustive Environmental Impact Report, or EIR, in favor of a less rigorous assessment, the lawsuit said.

    Proponents of the development say it would bring housing to this section of Studio City, which is being targeted for a flurry of new development. Across the river, private school Harvard-Westlake is planning to build an extensive athletic facility.

    Representatives of Erewhon and Midwood didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

    Roger Vincent

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  • Graffitied skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles poised for sale

    Graffitied skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles poised for sale

    Oceanwide Plaza, the bankrupt, unfinished development in downtown Los Angeles that became a canvas for trespassing graffiti artists, is officially on the market.

    The Chinese owners of the stalled residential, hotel and retail complex towering over Crypto.com Arena have hired real estate brokers to sell the property to buyers who could restart the project after work stopped in 2019. Taggers recently covered its outer walls with graffiti visible from far away.

    Likely bidders for the property include large institutional investors such as Blackstone Inc. and BlackRock, and cash-rich overseas sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East, Asia and Europe, property broker Mark Tarczynski said.

    “I think there’s a broad range of buyers,” he said, “but the pool of buyers is small because of the size of the project.”

    Tarczynski is part of a team from real estate brokerage Colliers and Hilco Real Estate that will market the property, which fills a large city block on Figueroa Street across from the arena and LA Live.

    An April appraisal by Colliers submitted in a bankruptcy case involving the project estimated the as-is market value at nearly $434 million, Bloomberg said. Colliers also projected a cost of $865 million to complete the buildings, which are 60% finished.

    Real estate developments stall from time to time as developers run out of money; but rarely do they fail in such a high-profile manner as Oceanwide Plaza, which was supposed to be a glamorous addition to the skyline and center of activity in the bustling sports and entertainment district of downtown’s South Park neighborhood.

    Beijing-based Oceanwide Holdings bought a sprawling parking lot across from the arena in 2014 and soon set to work on a three-tower complex intended to house luxury condominiums and apartments, and a five-star hotel supported by upmarket stores and restaurants. It was also to include a massive electronic sign intended to help bring a Times Square flavor to Figueroa Street.

    The international company ran into financial problems that coincided with a Chinese government decision to restrict the flow of outbound investment. Work stopped on Oceanwide Plaza in early 2019 as contractors building it stopped getting paid.

    In February, general contractor Lendlease filed a petition for the involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Oceanwide Holdings to force a sale of the property and pay creditors who were demanding almost $400 million. Major creditors include Lendlease and EB-5 visa investors, who helped fund construction. Oceanwide also owes back taxes to Los Angeles County and money to repay the city for security put in place in response to the graffiti and other incidents including BASE-jumping paragliders leaping form the towers.

    The city allotted nearly $4 million to remove graffiti and secure the property in February. The property is now surrounded by a tall metal fence.

    While some real estate observers have speculated that it might make sense to raze the towers to make way for a different development, Tarczynski predicts that the next owner will finish the existing project.

    “It’s about two-thirds of the way done, with about $1.2 billion already invested in it,” he said. “Why would you tear down a perfectly good project? It’s unimaginable.”

    Oceanwide’s location in the center of downtown’s sports and entertainment district should help entice investors to finish the complex, Tarczynski said.

    “Every bit of the potential synergy between Crypto.com Arena, LA Live and Oceanwide Plaza still exists,” he said, “and there is a huge demand for housing and also hotel demand. This remains an attractive project.”

    The brokerage team expects to distribute financial information and other facts about the project to qualified buyers early next month and call for offers by the end of July, Tarczynski said. “We hope to be in escrow by October.”

    Roger Vincent

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  • As court overturns a lot-splitting law, SB 9, one early adopter asks why

    As court overturns a lot-splitting law, SB 9, one early adopter asks why

    Sam Andreano is currently putting the finishing touches on his split-lot property in Whittier. He’s a guinea pig for state Senate Bill 9, a housing law that allows homeowners to divvy up their properties and build two or even four units on a once-single-family lot.

    Andreano, 59, was one of SB 9’s earliest adopters. He bought a single-family home for $790,000 in 2021, split the property in half and sold the existing home on half of the original lot for $777,777 in 2023 — essentially coming out with an empty lot for a little over $12,000, around what it would have cost in the 1970s.

    Then, Andreano spent around $400,000 building a home onto the back half of the original lot. He estimates it’ll be worth around $850,000 when it’s finished next month.

    The project was an absolute success; Andreano added density to a single-family lot and came out well financially.

    That’s why he was so shocked when an L.A. County judge struck down the law last month.

    Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin determined that SB 9 is unconstitutional because it doesn’t provide housing restricted for low-income residents, which he said was the law’s stated purpose. For now, it affects five cities: Redondo Beach, Carson, Torrance, Whittier and Del Mar. But the ruling clears the way for the law — one of many designed to alleviate California’s housing crisis — to be invalidated in cities across the state.

    Few took advantage of the law, especially compared with other state laws created to increase density. A study from Bay Area NPR affiliate KQED-FM found that 16 California cities — including San José, San Francisco, Long Beach and Sacramento — approved just 75 split-lot applications and 112 applications for new units under SB 9 from 2022 to 2023, while approving 8,800 accessory dwelling units during the same stretch.

    Andreano thinks he knows why. He said some property owners he spoke to were hesitant to build SB 9 projects because they were afraid it would be overturned, and now their fears have come true. His project is fine because the property has already been divided, but he said others still applying will surely lose money due to the ruling.

    “You have to pay the architect, the engineer and others. Then the ruling comes down saying it’s overturned, and you’re out $50,000,” he said.

    Andreano was able to push his project through before the court decision because he moved quickly. He bought the Whittier property in December 2021 with the intention to split it up under SB 9 and officially started his application four months later.

    The process took two years, hundreds of phone calls and tens of thousands of dollars.

    The law allows a single-family-zoned lot to be split into two, and owners can build either a single-family home or a duplex on each lot, for a total of up to four units. But it requires the two lots to be split somewhat evenly, with a maximum difference of 60-40, and also requires each new lot to be at least 1,200 square feet.

    Under these restrictions, the ideal properties for SB 9 are big lots with small houses. So Andreano specifically bought a property that would work well under the guidelines: a 1,200-square-foot house on a 6,232-square-foot lot. Big(ish) lot, small house.

    He had to file two applications: one with the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning, and one with the Whittier Public Works Department. He addressed easements, sewer lines, power lines, where water would flow when it rains, etc.

    Then he brought in an architect, which cost about $20,000; a grading engineer, which cost around $15,000; a soil engineer, which cost around $8,000; and a surveyor, which cost around $5,000. The L.A. County Fire Department did three inspections, which cost around $1,500 each, and he also spent around $3,000 on application fees.

    “It was a lot of back-and-forth,” he said. “I’d submit my application, and the city would ask for revisions on A, B and C. Then I’d submit the revisions, and they’d ask for revisions on D, E and F.”

    He’s in the final stages of finishing the back house, bringing the timeline of the project to roughly two years. He said it’s definitely been worth it.

    The property now features two single-family homes separated by a fence: a 1,200-square-foot front house with three bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms on a 3,349-square-foot lot, and an 1,100-square-foot back house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms on a 2,893-square-foot lot, where he plans to live. The lot-size split is 53.65% to 46.35%, well within the 60-40 restrictions.

    “People want to buy houses, and this is a way to increase density while also letting people work out the details on their own,” he said.

    Andreano hired Dennis Robinson, owner of Custom ADU Builder, to build the back house. Robinson has constructed seven SB 9 projects, and he’s completing seven more.

    Robinson handles both ADUs and SB 9 projects and said each type has it own perks.

    “ADUs are faster and cheaper, and you save around $20,000 in the permitting process alone,” he said. “But if you want to add multiple units to your property, SB 9 is better.”

    Robinson was surprised when the law was overturned. He was about to break ground on a project in Long Beach, where a family wanted to expand its garage into a 1,000-square-foot home and add a unit above, but now it’s in jeopardy.

    If the ruling is appealed and upheld, it would expand to affect California’s 121 charter cities, including Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

    The law was declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it didn’t provide housing for low-income residents, but Andreano said that if he had to sell or rent the home as low-income, he would’ve lost money.

    “That affordability factor makes sense for a 100-unit condo, where a developer can set a few units aside for low income, but it doesn’t work for an individual home,” he said. “The goal for SB 9 should be to add housing in order to make the market more affordable in general.”

    Jack Flemming

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  • University of Florida Students Build Camouflage Device for Army

    University of Florida Students Build Camouflage Device for Army

    It started as a class project for University of Florida senior engineering students, and it became a viable solution for soldiers who needed an easier, faster, and safer way to camouflage their vehicles on the battlefield.

    Students from Matthew J. Traum’s mechanical engineering capstone course received real-world training last year when they partnered with peers at Georgia Institute of Technology and the Civil-Military Innovation Institute, or CMI2, to design and produce a vehicle camouflage deployer for the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia.

    “This was a successful collaboration that tackled a problem faced by soldiers in the field — and much more rapidly than the Army’s conventional process,” said Traum, Ph.D., an instructional associate professor in the UF Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

    Traum said a prototype of the UF-designed vehicle camouflage deployment device was delivered to Fort Stewart at the end of the fall 2023 semester and replicated in-house by the Army. The device is currently being field tested.

    “Our students designed and built the device in one calendar year, which is remarkable speed compared to conventional Army innovation timelines, which can take years,” Traum said. “The system surpassed the Army’s stated targets for mounting, deploying, and retracting the camouflage while keeping the soldiers safer.”

    Traum learned through a colleague, Randy Emert at CMI2, about the potential for collaboration with the nonprofit organization through the Army’s Pathfinder program, managed by the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Army Research Laboratory and supported by CMI2 to bridge the gaps in defense innovation by fostering relationships between service members and researchers. Traum was invited to the Army base to listen as soldiers presented their wish lists of projects.

    “The Army’s tactical innovation labs play a key role in addressing in-field challenges faced by frontline soldiers and securing the necessary resources and technologies to resolve them,” said Emert, the CMI2 lab manager for the Marne Innovation Center at Fort Stewart. “We source problems directly from service members and engage engineering students in a short cycle of product development.”>

    Based on what Traum heard that day, the need to camouflage combat vehicles faster was a good fit for his capstone students.

    “Every time we park a combat vehicle on a battlefield, we need to cover it with camouflage material to hide it from the enemy,” said Capt. Chris Aliperti, co-founder of the Marne Innovation Center. “The process is not easy, and the soldiers were asking for something that would save them time and keep them safe.”

    The camouflage deployment problem was broad enough for senior engineering students to work on, and one that could potentially be designed and built within a year, said Aliperti, who recently was promoted and is now a mechanical engineering instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

    “This was something soldiers on the frontline were asking for, and our team didn’t have the bandwidth to address it,” Aliperti said. “The collaboration with the University of Florida provided invaluable hands-on experience to their students, and the end result contributes directly to enhancing the capabilities of our service members.”

    The capstone course is a UF mechanical engineering student’s last class before they graduate and is viewed as a culmination of what students have learned throughout the curriculum, Traum said. The Army project spanned three semesters with about 80 students enrolled each semester.

    Their approach evolved over the course of the year, and soldiers offered the students ideas and input weekly.

    “It was interesting to see how the design started out as something most people would come up with, but after students met with the soldiers, took their feedback and ran analyses, they ended up with something that looked very different,” Aliperti said. “And it solves the problem much better than the original design.”

    The students’ innovation addresses a longstanding pain point for soldiers. Traditionally, the poles used to hold up the camouflage material are staked into the ground, posing difficulties in muddy terrain or on urban concrete where securing them is impractical. Recognizing this limitation, the students devised a solution that uses mounting plates that are secured into place by the weight of the vehicle.

    “That novel feature excited the Army,” Traum said. “By eliminating dependence on ground conditions, the mounting plates offer a versatile solution.”

    The new device also masks the type of vehicle hidden beneath the camouflage netting. By strategically deploying poles to disrupt the shape of the netting, the device ensures that the vehicle’s silhouette varies each time it is deployed, thwarting the enemy’s ability to identify the concealed asset.

    “The students were smart enough to realize in order to make a new device feasible, they should build around the equipment already in use,” Aliperti said. “Their device allows us to use the same poles and the same net but much more efficiently.”

    Success of projects like the vehicle camouflage deployment device that was borne out of the Army’s tactical innovation lab set a precedent for future endeavors between academia and the military.

    “Bringing ideas of this scope and scale to students to chew on allows young engineers to apply the fundamental lessons they learn in a book to real-life problems,” Aliperti said. “And if we strike gold on a great design like this one from the University of Florida, we’ve made a monumental impact across the entire Army.”

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  • Historic Sportsmen’s Lodge hotel may be demolished for 520-unit apartment complex

    Historic Sportsmen’s Lodge hotel may be demolished for 520-unit apartment complex

    The historic Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City could be demolished to make way for a 520-unit residential complex and mixed-used development if the Los Angeles City Council approves the project Wednesday.

    Proponents of the development say it would bring much-needed affordable housing that would enable workers to live closer to their jobs.

    Opponents say the developers have not sufficiently weighed the project’s effects and that it would erase an important piece of history.

    The Sportsmen’s Lodge hotel permanently closed when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Now, the only active part of the property is the neighboring Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge, which opened in 2021 with retailers including grocery chain Erewhon and the sustainable clothing and shoe store Allbirds. The lodge’s event center was demolished to make room for the shops.

    Developers have long had designs on the nearly nine-acre property at Ventura Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue. Best Buy eyed it for a superstore in the ’90s. Richard Weintraub, who owned the land at the time, had plans to revamp the lodge in 2009 and reopen it as “Sportsmen’s Landing,” with a boutique shopping center and modern restaurants. Legal issues with the hotel lease prevented that project from coming to fruition.

    In addition to the 520 apartment units, 78 of which would be set aside for low-income tenants, the project would include 46,000 square feet of commercial space. The design would also include a bike and pedestrian path along the L.A. River.

    Erewhon, the Studio City Residents Assn. and Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel workers, filed appeals with the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee to stop the project, which had been approved by the city Planning Commission in July.

    At a meeting earlier this month, the committee denied the appeals, sending the proposal to the full City Council for Wednesday’s vote.

    “This will bring one of the most important and catalytic developments to this part of the San Fernando Valley,” Dave Rand, a lawyer representing the developer, Midwood Investment & Development, said at the meeting. “For years, Ventura Boulevard has been a largely ignored, yet hugely important corridor in the Valley. With this city’s unbelievably ambitious housing goals and obligations, the corner of Coldwater and Ventura Boulevard at this site is the perfect location to bring housing, mixed use and river-appropriate fronted development.”

    The property, which became popular for its trout fishing and bait-and-tackle shop in the 1930s, was first owned by actors Noah and Wallace Beery.

    Dancers Peta Siddall and Josie Neglia demonstrate salsa moves before a crowd in the Sportsmen’s Lodge in 2001.

    (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

    In 1946, the event center and restaurant opened, followed by the 190-room hotel in 1962. In its heyday, Sportsmen’s Lodge was a movie studio hangout, and many local residents knew it as a popular venue for weddings, bar mitzvahs, New Year’s parties and more.

    In recent years, most hotel guests were tourists visiting nearby Universal Studios, but that dried up in the pandemic, and the hotel has been shuttered since then. In 2020, the hotel was a Project Roomkey site, housing people experiencing homelessness to reduce the spread of the virus.

    In 1964, the lodge became the first hotel to unionize in the San Fernando Valley and was one of the first union hotels in Los Angeles. The organizing drive was led by Bill Robertson, a leader in the Los Angeles labor movement.

    “We continue to believe that … the historic hotel is an important remaining link to that history, and therefore should be preserved,” Unite Here Local 11 co-President Kurt Petersen said in a written statement.

    An Erewhon representative did not respond to a request for comment.

    Midwood Investment & Development, which bought the property in 2017, sued Erewhon in 2022, accusing it of failing to pay rent and overusing the retail center’s parking lot for its employees.

    Erewhon countersued, alleging that Midwood wrongly prohibited Erewhon employees from using the parking lot and that Midwood “induced” Erewhon to lease a space in the proposed shopping center.

    Amy Minteer, an attorney for the Studio City Residents Assn., said the association doesn’t want to kill the Sportsmen’s Lodge project but to reduce its height and lessen the construction effects.

    Across the L.A. River, Harvard-Westlake school is building an athletic campus on a former golf course.

    The cumulative effects of both projects are a big concern, Minteer said — not only air quality and construction noise but also the loss of mature trees.

    “The Residents Association doesn’t want there to not be a project,” Minteer said. “They just want this project revised, to mitigate the impacts to the community and to come into closer alignment with existing standards for the neighborhood.”

    The residential building will be 97 feet tall, while the tallest building in the area is 56 feet.

    “It’s just way out of proportion with everything else in the area,” Minteer said.

    Rand, the attorney for the developer, said the project received a density bonus to raise the height beyond the usual 30 feet, which can only be denied if there is a “quantifiable and identifiable health and human safety risk.”

    Crispin Carrasco, who lives near the proposed project and is a member of the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters, said the council supports the development because Midwood has said it will work with contractors who will hire local carpenters.

    Stella Stahl, communications director for Councilmember Nithya Raman’s office, said Raman has not yet taken an official position on the project.

    At the committee meeting, Mashel Majid, Raman’s deputy chief of staff, said that the development will not significantly affect the area and that Raman’s office is “committed to supporting housing projects.” But Majid expressed disappointment that the historic hotel would be demolished.

    “Because this project is on private property and dictated by state laws that protect the ability for this site to build housing, the city, unfortunately, cannot require that the hotel remain,” she said.

    Jenna Peterson

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  • Opinion: Heat pumps cut costs and pollution. So why isn’t it easier to install one in California?

    Opinion: Heat pumps cut costs and pollution. So why isn’t it easier to install one in California?

    The nation’s electric utilities have voiced overwhelming support for reducing carbon emissions. Eighty percent of U.S. electricity customers are served by a utility with a 100% carbon-reduction target, according to the Smart Electric Power Alliance, and utility executives have touted their sustainability plans at the U.N. Climate Conference, Davos and beyond.

    So why is it so hard to get help switching to a climate-friendly heat pump?

    Marvels of modern engineering, heat pumps provide heating and cooling by transferring warm or cold air into or out of a home, eliminating the need to generate heat. They have been shown to substantially slash consumer heating costs and cut greenhouse gas emissions up to 50%.

    Like so many other Americans who helped fuel a residential construction boom following the onset of the pandemic, I recently embarked on a wholesale remodel of my home in the Bay Area. Unlike most of my fellow remodelers, I make my living analyzing trends in customer experience with the nation’s electric, gas and water utilities. As an energy nerd, I saw the project as a chance to delve into the various incentives that the utilities have been promoting to facilitate my conversion from a gas-fired furnace to an electric heat pump.

    What I found was a tangle of red tape, well-meaning but tragically ill-informed customer service representatives, and hours upon hours of filing forms, chasing down obscure information and questioning contractors — all in a quixotic quest to claim my local, state and federal rebates.

    Heat pumps loom large as a component of electric utility sustainability initiatives. The Biden administration recently announced that $63 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding would be used to spur domestic manufacturing of heat pumps, and local, state and federal incentives have been deployed in most jurisdictions nationwide to encourage consumers to make the switch.

    At the federal level, consumers are eligible for a tax credit that covers 30% of the cost of buying and installing a heat pump, up to a maximum of $2,000 per year. The TECH Clean California program offers incentives to contractors to install heat pumps, and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and other utilities offer rebates and other benefits. In Marin County, where I live, state, county and local incentives promised to bring the total rebate on my project to almost $5,000.

    That prospect, along with the long-term value of increased efficiency, was enough to persuade me to take the plunge on a system that was a bit more expensive than a comparable gas furnace. Moreover, my extensive research on the subject was enough to overcome widespread misconceptions about the technology and its ability to comfortably heat and cool my home.

    The good news is that my heat pump works wonderfully! It’s so good that I’ve started recommending one to my friends and neighbors. It isn’t loud or dry like traditional heat; it’s even and smooth. The system allowed much more flexibility in our construction and design. And, best of all, I now have central cooling for the first time.

    Unfortunately, I’ve also put hours of work into chasing rebates I still haven’t received.

    Ironically, the easiest part of the process was applying for a federal rebate through the Internal Revenue Service. When the IRS sets the benchmark for customer service, you know you have a problem.

    Among the challenges I faced were an hour-plus conversation with a friendly Pacific Gas & Electric Co. representative who knew absolutely nothing about heat pump programs; an apologetic county official who informed me that I would need to fill out a commercial form even though my project was residential because “that’s the way the paperwork is written”; and even a request to provide detailed photos of my old gas furnace — the one that had already been removed — to prove I had made the switch.

    Fortunately, because I was documenting the process partly for my own education, I had those photos and welcomed the opportunity to find all the hurdles consumers face. But will typical consumers — those who don’t spend their workdays analyzing the minutiae of utility customer experience — even bother to deal with this craziness? Probably not.

    Perhaps that has something to do with the widespread customer apathy toward electric utility sustainability efforts. J.D. Power’s most recent study of this topic found that just 19% of customers were even aware of their utility’s carbon reduction initiatives.

    We’re living in an era of amazing technological innovation, and we have public policies designed to catalyze consumer adoption of these breakthroughs. But if the same old bureaucratic hurdles stand in the way of access to those programs, no one wins.

    There is a huge opportunity here for innovative utilities to take the lead on improving not only our policies but also the mechanisms that make them work. As a utilities industry professional, I’m optimistic that our leaders will take up this cause. As a consumer, I just hope I eventually get my rebate.

    Andrew Heath is the vice president of utilities intelligence at J.D. Power.

    Andrew Heath

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  • DIY This Affordable Cedar Swing Gate Design for a Backyard Driveway

    DIY This Affordable Cedar Swing Gate Design for a Backyard Driveway

    You don’t have to be a handyman to make this swing gate design. After being quoted an obscene amount for my own driveway swing gate, I took matters into my own hands. Here’s how I made my own wood swing gate using existing fence panels and some easy to source hardware.

    It’s been a while since I shared one of my DIY building projects. Now that I’m in my new house, I can work on these big projects again and share with you my process.

    One of the first things I worked on in my backyard was my back driveway swing gate. I needed it right away as a place to park my trailer.

    With not a ton of room in my backyard, it took a little problem solving to come up with a swing gate design that would work for my property. But I’m so happy with how it turned out!

    Now, I know that swing gates aren’t necessarily the exciting part of building a backyard garden, but let me geek out for a second and share this swing gate design with you. If you’re in need of something similar, hopefully, this will help you come up with your own innovative swinging driveway gates.

    Here’s what I’ll be covering today…

    wood swing gatewood swing gate
    The swing gate opens into the alleyway, allowing me to easily back my trailer into the backyard.

    Before the Wood Swing Gate

    In my backyard, I have a standard cedar fence. Originally, the entire back of the fence was one 8 ft. panel followed by a gate with a swing pedestrian door and then two more 8 ft. panels.

    My goal was to get my trailer in the backyard. Not only would this allow me to store the trailer on my property, but also provide a guest house for visitors. And it also just looks so darn cute in my backyard!

    At first, I was thinking of getting some aluminum gates so that I could drive the trailer into the backyard and also open up the backyard directly into the alley to get lots of space.

    But I couldn’t believe my eyes when I was quoted $15,000 for installing an aluminum gate. It seemed so ridiculously high!

    Next, I looked into having somebody build a big roller gate. Unfortunately, roller gates need quite a lot of room for the size of the gate I needed for it to roll and slide to the sides, so that option was out.

    The swing gate seemed like the next best option!

    swinging driveway gateswinging driveway gate
    My original fence was cedar, so I used a cedar fence panel to match.

    My Swing Gate Design

    The first step in designing my swing gate was to remove the existing fence panels. With the help of a friend, we removed two of my fence panels, as well as the center post that was originally holding the two panels together side by side.

    I replaced the panels with new 8 ft. by 6 ft. cedar panels. These are just the typical fence panels you can get at most large box hardware stores.

    Next, we needed to increase the width of the two panels by securing 2×4 boards on either panel edge so they would sit between the panel and the fence post. With the center post removed, the two panels could now meet in the middle.

    Swing gate hingesSwing gate hinges
    You can see the 2×4 secured between the gate panel and the post to increase its width just enough.

    Hardware

    For my wood swing gate, I attached each panel to the fence using three heavy-duty t-hinges. The hinges are fully extendable, so they open up and press completely flat to the other side of the fence when I want to open up to the alley.

    These hinges were crucial in my design, as they allowed me to fully open the gate into the alleyway without taking up additional space in my small backyard.

    We also got a gate latch to keep the two gates closed. To install it, we needed to cut out part of the premade fence panels. The latch is mounted to the 2×4 boards that we attached to the panels.

    Swing gate latchSwing gate latch
    You can also get a latch that you can lock if you want to keep your gate more secure.

    Wheels

    To complete the DIY driveway gate, we added roller wheels. Now I won’t lie and say that they’re a little bit flimsy, and I would recommend something more substantial if you were creating a similar design.

    But I won’t be opening my gate very often, only to let my trailer in and out and on the occasional big yard work day. When I need to open my gate, I’m very careful. It’s certainly a little wobbly upon opening, but it works perfectly fine for what I need.

    swing gate wheelsswing gate wheels
    If you intend to open the gate often, I would invest in high-quality wheels. I just used basic roller wheels.

    Where to Buy the Wood Swing Gate Materials

    For my wood swing gate, I used the typical standard cedar fence panels (8 ft. wide by 6 ft. tall) that you can purchase at Home Depot or other big-box stores.

    If possible, I highly recommend you get them directly from the manufacturers rather than the big box stores because they’re much better quality. Anyone who makes cedar fencing products is a good option.

    I ended up getting mine from a box store because I only needed two and it was easier for me to just grab them. But they’ve already started warping. This means I’ll have to replace them sooner rather than later.

    Ideally, your gate should last just as long as any other fence panels. So, if you can, get your wood panels from a cedar fence manufacturer rather than a big box store.

    swing gate designswing gate design
    You can also stain your wood if you want a specific colour or want to match the colour of your existing fence.

    How Much Did My Double Swing Gate Cost?

    My double swing gate cost less than $1000 overall. It is a super inexpensive solution that works perfectly for what I needed—way better than that $15,000 quote!

    For all the materials, it was about $700, and I had the help of a friend for the installation, so that lowered the labour costs.

    The hardware didn’t cost much, and I didn’t need much beyond the hinges, latch, and wheels. The pre-made fence panels were very easy to get and also meant less hands-on building was required.

    Overall, I’m very happy with how my DIY driveway gate turned out and it ended up costing was less than I initially thought.

    DIY driveway gateDIY driveway gate

    If you make a similar swing gate design, let me know how this works out in the comments below! I’d love to hear how you make your own double swing gate.

    More Weekend Projects to Try

    Pin image for how to make a DIY Garden Swing GatePin image for how to make a DIY Garden Swing Gate

    Holly Heuver

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  • A bird’s eye view of proposed Bay Area utopian community

    A bird’s eye view of proposed Bay Area utopian community

    Tech billionaire backers of a sweeping proposal to build an idealistic community from the ground up in the Bay Area released an aerial view of the project’s plans for tens of thousands of homes surrounded by open space, trails and using renewable energy sources.

    In the photo and an accompanying ad released Wednesday, California Forever showcased the community’s proximity to the broader Bay Area, while touting that the Solano County project would convert unused farmland into “walkable middle class neighborhoods with homes we can afford.”

    The new material comes as California Forever is gathering signatures for a ballot initiative in Solano County that would amend zoning codes to allow the project to be built on agricultural land. With 13,000 valid signatures, the ballot measure titled the East Solano Homes, Jobs, and Clean Energy Initiative would go before voters in November.

    Backers of the project include Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader who is chief executive of California Forever; LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; venture capitalist Marc Andreessen; and Patrick and John Collison, who founded the payment-processing company Stripe.

    The new ad and renderings of the proposed utopia attempt to answer some of the questions locals have had about the project, which for years was shrouded in secrecy as tech billionaires quietly bought up farmland.

    The proximity of the project to Travis Air Force Base has been one point of contention. California Forever said the new community would be 4.5 miles from the base with a security buffer zone where there would be nothing other than agriculture and solar farms. The community would create an open space of 712 acres featuring sports fields and trails between itself and neighboring city Rio Vista, a town of about 10,000 people on the Sacramento River.

    Renderings of the community show picturesque open spaces where families could host birthday parties and go on bike rides, along with tree-lined neighborhoods and a bustling downtown.

    In the newly released ad, backers say the project would use unused land “rated among the worst for agriculture in all of Solano County, land where for years and years, nothing much has been able to grow.” The project promises to provide $500 million for down-payment assistance, scholarships and parks for Solano County residents and 15,000 new higher-paying jobs in manufacturing and technology.

    The community would be designed to have 50,000 residents at first, then grow to as many as 400,000.

    The campaign faces opposition from the Solano County chapter of the Sierra Club, which said housing should not be built on agricultural land. Residents in the area have also expressed concerns about the effect on traffic.

    If the ballot measure is approved by voters, other government approvals would then be required. Environmental groups have signaled lawsuits are possible, which could tie up the matter in court.

    “A knowledgeable voter is the best kind of voter, and we find that the more Solano County residents learn about our project, the more they like it,” said Matt Rodriguez, campaign manager for the East Solano Homes, Jobs, and Clean Energy Initiative. “We’re excited to be engaging with members of the Solano County community and this is another opportunity for us to continue sharing information about how we plan to bring middle class homes and good paying jobs to Solano County.”

    Melody Gutierrez

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  • La Cañada Flintridge must process ‘builder’s remedy’ affordable-housing plan, court rules

    La Cañada Flintridge must process ‘builder’s remedy’ affordable-housing plan, court rules

    A court ruled on Monday that La Cañada Flintridge violated the state Housing Accountability Act when it denied an application for an affordable-housing project last year.

    Under the ruling, the city will be forced to process the application, which was filed under a little-known but increasingly relevant provision in California housing law known as “builder’s remedy.” The provision serves as a punishment for cities that are out of compliance with housing element regulations that require local governments to develop specific zoning plans to address population increases.

    Builder’s remedy is a massive boon for developers, allowing them to build whatever they want — even outside local zoning restrictions — so long as it has a certain number of low- or middle-income units.

    The proposed project in this case, located at 600 Foothill Blvd., would replace an aging Christian Science church with a five-story building that includes 80 mixed-income units and a 14-room hotel, totaling nearly 120,000 square feet, bringing density and affordable housing to a city that has very little.

    La Cañada is a city of single-family homes, and the average value is $2.317 million, according to Zillow. It has added virtually no multifamily housing in recent years, and as a result, the population has hovered around 20,000 for the last four decades while surrounding communities swelled with residents.

    The court’s decision is a big win for affordable-housing advocates as well as the developers behind the project, who’ve been fighting to get the multiuse development approved for nearly half a decade.

    It’s a setback for officials and others in the city who have resisted the project, drawing criticisms of having a “not in my backyard” attitude along the way.

    “La Cañada Flintridge is the latest community that has failed in their effort to override state housing laws. Today’s favorable ruling should serve as a warning to other NIMBY jurisdictions that the state will hold every community accountable in planning for their fair share of housing,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

    Newsom, along with state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, had intervened in the situation in December, filing a legal action asking the court to reverse the city’s denial of the project.

    “We are pleased that the court agrees with us that La Cañada Flintridge must follow state housing laws to facilitate affordable housing and alleviate our housing crisis,” Bonta said in a statement. “The California Department of Justice is committed to enforcing state laws that increase housing supply and affordability.”

    The three partners behind the project have strong ties to the city: Alexandra Hack grew up in the area; Garret Weyand lives a few blocks from the site; and Jonathan Curtis was once the mayor.

    “This should be a sign for other cities that may be thinking about taking similar steps to La Cañada on builder’s remedy applications,” Weyand said. “The city’s reluctance to do this is one of the reasons housing is so expensive to build and develop in California.”

    The trio filed the application under the builder’s remedy provision in November 2022, but city officials rejected it. They claimed La Cañada wasn’t subject to the provision since it had already “self-certified” its housing element plan, which had yet to be approved by the state Department of Housing and Community Development.

    The city has since come into compliance, but because the developers submitted their application before Housing and Community Development approved La Cañada’s housing element plan, the builder’s remedy provision remained an option.

    “Builder’s remedy is probably going to be one of most successful laws to build housing in the state of California,” Weyand said.

    Jack Flemming

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  • Work begins on transformative condo and hotel development in Beverly Hills

    Work begins on transformative condo and hotel development in Beverly Hills


    Construction has begun on One Beverly Hills, a nearly $5-billion condominium and hotel complex that promises to transform the Beverly Hills skyline and be a commanding presence on its western edge.

    With tall greenery-laden towers standing over a sprawling garden, the complex set to open by early 2028 is expected to house some of the priciest condos and hotel suites in the country, as developers seek to capitalize on the city’s international reputation for luxury and celebrity.

    Owners of the property at Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards ceremonially broke ground Thursday on what they call a 17.5-acre “urban resort” that will unify the neighboring Beverly Hilton and Waldorf Astoria hotels with condo high-rises, 8.5-acres of botanical gardens and the first ultra-deluxe Aman hotel on the West Coast.

    Rendering of an entrance to One Beverly Hills on Santa Monica Boulevard near the retail portion of the complex.

    (Foster + Partners)

    The scope of the complex, which will have by far the two tallest towers in Beverly Hills, marks a departure from years past when the city made a point of keeping its commercial buildings small scale compared to next-door neighbors Los Angeles and West Hollywood.

    “Candidly, I think it marks a new generation of Beverly hills,” Mayor Julian Gold said. “Cities need to grow just like people grow. They can’t be stagnant, they cannot stay only the way they were.”

    One Beverly Hills will be “new and fresh in a big way,” he said. “The investment is enormous. It will redefine luxury in Beverly Hills.”

    The Beverly Hills City Council approved the project in 2021 over the objection of Councilmember and former Mayor John Mirisch, who called the proposed development “elitist, exclusive and exclusionary.”

    “Without affordable housing, the project has turned into a castle-fortress of exclusion,” Mirisch told the other four council members.

    Current Mayor Gold said tax revenue from One Beverly Hills will be used to fund affordable housing in other parts of the city. He estimated that the complex will generate tens of millions of dollars in annual taxes for the city.

    The two towers — 26 and 32 stories — will have a combined total of fewer than 200 condos. The number is variable because people may buy more than one unit and combine them, developer Jonathan Goldstein of Cain International said.

    Prices have not yet been set, but Beverly Hills is one of the most expensive housing markets in the country and units can be expected to cost tens of millions of dollars. Recent top-tier luxury condo listings in the Los Angeles area range from $20 million to $50 million.

    The tower residences will be branded and serviced by Aman, a Swiss company owned by Russian-born real estate developer Vlad Doronin, that was described by Forbes as “the world’s most preeminent resort brand” and attracts such affluent guests as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and George and Amal Clooney.

    Aman is best known for its small resorts in tropical locales or historically significant properties such as a 16th century palazzo in Venice, but also has urban outposts in Tokyo and New York, where suites start at about $1,800 a night.

    The Aman in Beverly Hills will have 75 suites in a 10-story building. It will also have a club that members can join for a price. Its New York club made news in 2022 by charging an initiation fee of as much as $200,000 while receiving mixed reviews in local publications. Residents in the Bevery Hills condos may receive Aman services such as housekeeping and room service.

    The most public aspect of One Beverly Hills will be the gardens designed by Los Angeles architecture firm RIOS, which also designed the 12-acre Gloria Molina Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles and created a new master plan for Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge.

    RIOS’ plan for One Beverly Hills calls for distinct sets of botanical gardens intended to reflect the diverse landscape of Southern California with mostly drought-resistant native plants living on recycled water. The gardens will have more than 200 species of plants and trees including palms, oaks, sycamores, succulents and olives.

    The Beverly Hilton hotel will receive renovations as part of the project.

    The Beverly Hilton hotel will receive renovations as part of the project.

    (Foster + Partners)

    “I am really interested in pursuing what a botanical environment is for the 21st century,” firm founder Mark Rios said when the project was first announced. It will consume tons of carbon dioxide while “teaching people that drought-quality planting doesn’t mean cactus.”

    About half of the gardens will be for the exclusive use of residents, Aman club members and hotel guests. The rest of the gardens will be open to the public.

    One Beverly Hills is “one of the biggest projects in North America,” with a total cost of between $4 billion and $5 billion, said Goldstein, chief executive of Cain International. The London-based investment firm is overseeing the development with OKO Group, an international real estate development firm created by Doronin, who called Beverly Hills “the natural next step for Aman as we continue our strategic growth into the world’s finest urban centers.”

    The development will produce more than 2,700 direct construction jobs, Cain International said. It estimated that One Beverly Hills will generate about $40 billion in total local spending across 30 years, $9 billion of which will be new.

    One Beverly Hills was master planned by Foster + Partners, with Aman designs by KHA (Kerry Hill Architects) of Australia and Singapore. London-based Foster + Partners is led by Norman Foster, an English lord perhaps best known for designing a landmark lipstick-like skyscraper in London known as the Gherkin and the hoop-shaped Apple Inc. headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.

    Significant upgrades and restorations to the historic Beverly Hilton will also take place as part of the project, Cain International said. The Beverly Hilton was hotelier Conrad Hilton’s most luxurious property when it opened in 1955 and has been the home to the annual Golden Globe Awards since 1961.

    One Beverly Hills will include shops and restaurants intended to complement the city’s upscale retail areas, Goldstein said.

    Most of the early interest in buying condos is from local residents looking to leave their large homes, he said, along with international buyers familiar with Aman hotels.

    Although the neighborhood is dominated by single-family homes, Beverly Hills real estate agent Bret Parsons of Compass said interest in condos has grown in recent years.

    “We have an aging population in Southern California who need to downsize and we don’t have enough one-level homes for this affluent population to move to,” Parsons said. “Condos are very appealing for an older person because they can be very, very luxurious, on one level, and you get all the services you can imagine.”

    The One Beverly Hills property includes vacant land formerly occupied by a famed Robinsons-May department store that sits west of the hotels. The site was considered one of the most desirable real estate development sites in the country but has lain fallow for years as previous plans to develop it failed to materialize. Cain International was able to secure control of the vacant land and existing hotel property and unite them in the new project designed by Foster.

    A guest suite at the Aman with a private pool.

    A guest suite at the Aman with a private pool.

    (Kerry Hill Architects)

    Merv Griffin Way, which cuts between the two parcels, will be covered by a new level that supports the gardens but remain a pass-through between Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards. The garden will also cover an underground garage for 1,800 vehicles.

    “This is our western gateway,” the mayor said. “As you enter Beverly hills, it will be amazing.”



    Roger Vincent

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  • Opinion: Why is L.A. still letting single-family homeowners block solutions to the housing crisis?

    Opinion: Why is L.A. still letting single-family homeowners block solutions to the housing crisis?

    Last month YIMBY Law, a nonprofit, pro-housing advocacy group, sued the City of Los Angeles on behalf of a private developer seeking to construct a 360-unit apartment building in Canoga Park. These apartments would be only for renters who meet the federal definition of low to moderate incomes in L.A. The project was submitted under Mayor Karen Bass’ Executive Directive 1, meant to dramatically speed up the approval and permitting process for 100% affordable housing projects. But recently the city revoked the eligibility of the Canoga Park building for this program following complaints from single-family homeowners.

    This about-face is part of a trend. Last year, the mayor’s office amended ED1 to shield single-family zones from streamlined development — after eight such applications, including the Canoga Park proposal, were already submitted. Those proposals were then denied eligibility for ED1. Some of the projects have filed appeals; one denial has been overturned, but the City Council rejected an appeal for the Canoga project.

    Without ED1, these projects face a discretionary approval process that may involve lengthy environmental review and other delays likely to prevent them from happening. This turn of events may cost the city more than 1,100 affordable apartments.

    Bass announced ED1 as moving “City Hall away from its traditional approach that is focused on process and replacing it with a new approach focused on solutions, results and speed.” The mayor’s stated intention received a remarkable boost via the state law AB 2334, passed in 2022, allowing developer incentives for 100% affordable projects including substantial increases in height limits and allowable density (the number of housing units on a given-sized parcel of land) in “very low vehicle travel areas,” where limited residential development has kept down traffic. The idea is that these areas can more easily accommodate any extra traffic stemming from increased housing density.

    The potential cost savings from ED1 and AB 2334 encouraged private developers to produce long-term, income-restricted units — crucially, without relying on public financing. If the more than 1,100 apartments now held up from ED1 streamlining were built through the standard publicly subsidized pathway, at a typical cost of around $600,000 per unit, they could require up to $660,000,000 in public funding. Privately funded alternatives are a boon to local, regional and state governments that have sought for years to spur the production of so-called “missing middle” housing that is affordable to working-class and middle-income households.

    Yet now this progress is in question, just as the power of these complementary city and state reforms has begun to emerge. The lawsuit concerning the Canoga Park building may result in one or more of the halted projects being built eventually, and the state has suggested that the city erred in revoking their ED1 eligibility. But even if these projects get approved, since ED1 now excludes the single-family neighborhoods that make up approximately three-quarters of residential land in L.A., they would mark an end rather than a beginning to similar development.

    Some residents of these neighborhoods say that’s only fair. According to Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, for homeowners affected by new apartments, “their property value is going to get cut in half, they’re going to have a big shadow over their place.”

    As it happens, I can speak personally to these concerns. I am the owner and resident of a unit in a small rowhouse condo development on the Westside located directly across the street from an ongoing project converting a single-family home into a multi-unit apartment building.

    My neighbors and my family are losing a good deal of sunlight throughout the day from the new building. Our street has been a cacophonous, messy construction site for so long it’s hard to remember what it was like before.

    But I know that this is what solving the housing crisis looks like: A single parcel that previously housed one family is being transformed into apartments for perhaps 15 to 25 people, with units reserved for low-income households. Like those in the contested ED1 projects, these affordable units won’t require public funding.

    There is simply no way to solve our housing crisis without throwing shade in some single-family residential areas. We might have to increase traffic in some neighborhoods, too, though providing more housing in jobs-rich West L.A. could ultimately reduce traffic by allowing people to live closer to where they work. As for property values, multiple studies have shown that low-income housing does not substantially reduce them, including in high-cost neighborhoods, and often increases them.

    Some constituencies will always oppose development. Local policymakers who are serious about solving our dual crises of housing affordability and homelessness have to take a hard look at how much political capital they are willing to spend to create effective policies in the face of such objections.

    If we can’t build fully affordable projects that don’t drain government coffers even on the edges of land zoned for single-family residences, then Angelenos should prepare for a permanent housing crisis.

    But if this sounds like the wrong direction for the city, Bass and the City Council should fully commit to protecting and expanding innovative policy such as the original ED1, without categorical exclusions for single-family neighborhoods, and AB 2334. Mechanisms that convince private developers to produce long-term affordable housing offer what is as close to a free lunch on this crisis as L.A. is ever likely to get.

    Jason Ward is an economist at Rand Corp. and the co-director of the Rand Center on Housing and Homelessness.



    Jason Ward

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  • Inglewood people mover gets $1-billion commitment from federal officials

    Inglewood people mover gets $1-billion commitment from federal officials

    Federal officials have pledged up to $1 billion for an elevated train connecting SoFi Stadium and other venues to the Crenshaw Line, marking a major milestone for a marquee project that could open ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games.

    The Federal Transit Administration commitment would finance half of the project’s $2-billion price tag.

    To lock down the award, the city of Inglewood and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority must clear several more hurdles, including securing the other half of the money and making substantial progress to prepare the project for construction.

    “It’s going to improve the fan experience,” said Inglewood Mayor James Butts, who has championed the project. “Fans, our residents and the employees deserve affordable and efficient transit options. This system will be good for the environment. It will again create jobs.”

    Known as the Inglewood Transit Connector, the fully automated three-stop people mover will roll through Inglewood’s downtown and ferry fans to the city’s growing list of entertainment venues, which include the Kia Forum and the soon-to-be opened Inuit Dome. It’s expected to ease traffic during major events.

    The city and Metro, which together form the project’s joint powers authority, say they have secured about 85% of the total $2-billion tab, counting the federal commitment. Although that commitment is not finalized, officials say it signals the viability of an ambitious project they aim to open before the 2028 Olympic Games.

    “This federal support is a force multiplier on our momentum and an endorsement of all levels of government working together to benefit the public. We will get the next step done,” said Lisa Trifiletti, who is overseeing the project for the authority.

    And although officials hope the people mover will be running by 2028, Federal Transit Administration documents show that it isn’t expected to open until 2030 and will cost $33 million a year to operate.

    If the connector does open in time for the Olympics, Inglewood, a city of about 104,000, would be center stage, starting with the opening ceremonies at SoFi Stadium. Transit officials plan on creating a car-free Olympics and have been using events at SoFi, including Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, as a testing ground for not only the Olympics but how to deal with changing ridership patterns.

    Backers say the elevated people mover and the tourists it brings will also help revitalize downtown Inglewood. But dozens of business will be forced to relocate to make room for it. And transportation experts question whether the people mover, which has increased in price by more than half a billion dollars over the last few years, is worth the cost and will deliver on its promises.

    On a busy weekday, hundreds come through the door of Fiesta Martin Bar & Grill at Florence Avenue and Market Street. Esaul Martin, who runs the downtown Inglewood restaurant with his sister, is among those who will be forced to relocate.

    “We don’t have a choice in what to do,” he said. The outside patio is teeming on weekends, and he has a steady local clientele.

    Though his family owns several restaurants in town, he said, this is the most successful.

    “Most people aren’t happy about it,” Martin said about other businesses nearby. “The options that they are giving us doesn’t come close. Either it doesn’t have parking, it’s too small, or the rent is four times this.”

    Martin has hired a lawyer. But, he said, no relocation fee can replicate what he has created here. And he worries about his 45 employees.

    Butts said change is hard, but the relocation packages are generous.

    “This is major progress in the evolution of the city. Things are not going to be the way they are,” he said. “The benefits of this project far outweigh the angst of displacement, because everyone in Inglewood wins.”

    Transit experts say the other big winners are people like Rams owner Stan Kroenke.

    The $5-billion SoFi Stadium, home to the Rams and Chargers, opened in 2020. It had bypassed the lengthy environmental review process typically required in California, which would have quantified the traffic, pollution and noise that would come with a 70,000-seat stadium. Often, the developer must mitigate those impacts.

    Instead, the project was approved six weeks after it was announced.

    “There is definitely a good case to be made that at least there should be some financial contribution from the stadium owners,” said Jacob Wasserman, a research project manager at UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. “It is going to serve the customers there who pay money to go see events and games. All transit serves businesses, and it’s a public service, but I think that this is disproportionately focused on these event venues.”

    Butts said providing transportation is the job of municipalities.

    The authority estimates that the people mover will have 4 million boardings in 2028 and nearly 8 million by 2078, which Wasserman said is likely overly optimistic.

    Environmental studies show regular weekdays will be much quieter, bringing 414 passengers during peak hours and carrying 11,450 riders the hour after games.

    Three pre-qualified teams are now preparing bids for the project, and the authority expects to choose one this summer.

    Is it worth it?

    James Moore, founding director of the USC Transportation Engineering Program, said it probably isn’t. He pointed to the half billion dollars it cost to connect the Oakland Airport to BART, which, he said, ended up having no measurable effect on either airport traffic or BART ridership.

    “The bus was doing just fine,” he said. “If the goal is to connect riders from the event generator to the rail line, this is an expensive way to do it.”

    Rachel Uranga

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  • UC Berkeley makes dead-of-night push to wall off storied People's Park

    UC Berkeley makes dead-of-night push to wall off storied People's Park

    BERKELEY — 

    A massive contingent of law enforcement officers converged on People’s Park in the wee hours of Thursday morning, intent on clearing the way for crews to wall off the storied green space near the UC Berkeley campus in preparation for construction of a much-contested housing complex for students.

    The university launched the extraordinary operation — designed to double-stack metal cargo containers around the entire park perimeter — around 12 a.m.

    On their arrival, police surrounded the park. Inside, they were met by several dozen protesters, chanting “Long live People’s Park” along with shouts of “Fight back!” Some were holed up in a makeshift treehouse and on the roof of a single-story building in the park.

    By starting the exercise under the cover of darkness and during students’ winter break, university leaders hoped to minimize a conflict with activists adamant the park should remain open space, a living tribute to free speech and student activism. The university planned to install the cargo containers over several days, banking on the massive metal structures to provide a more formidable barrier than the fences protesters have easily breached in the past.

    The university acknowledged that construction of the housing, ensnared in a legal dispute, cannot begin unless the state Supreme Court agrees that the Berkeley campus has completed an adequate environmental review of the project. The proposed development would create a dormitory with space for 1,100 students in a college town with a dire shortage of affordable housing. In addition, it would include permanent supportive housing for 125 people living homeless. About 60% of the site would remain green space, with commemorative exhibits about the park’s history.

    “Given that the existing legal issues will inevitably be resolved, we decided to take this necessary step now in order to minimize the possibility of disorder and disruption for the public and our students when we are eventually cleared to resume construction,” Chancellor Carol Christ said in a prepared statement.

    The university said it intended to keep streets around the park, and at least one block to the north and east, closed for three or four days.

    “Unfortunately, our planning and actions must take into account that some of the project’s opponents have previously resorted to violence and vandalism,” Christ said, adding that this was “despite strong support for the project on the part of students, community members, advocates for unhoused people, the elected leadership of the City of Berkeley, as well as the legislature and governor of the state of California.”

    Activists intent on preserving the park were tipped off several days in advance that the university would try to cordon off the site while students were on break. They called the incursion by law enforcement and work crews an “attack” that would destroy a legacy to people-powered activism.

    Nicholas Alexander was among the activists standing watch over People’s Park on Wednesday evening, prepared to protest efforts to wall off the site.

    (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

    Nicholas Alexander was among a small group standing watch over the park Wednesday evening around sunset. Alexander, once unhoused, praised the park as a place that needy people have been able to go for decades to find assistance. He said he was part of the group that helped tear down a university-erected fence in 2022. “This park has always helped the counterculture and the disenfranchised,” he said, “and it’d be a shame if it was taken from us now, because where else will we go?”

    Another member of the group watching the park, Sylvia Tree, said she had graduated from Berkeley in 2021. She described the conflict as “a struggle based on the land.”

    “It’s about a place where people who don’t own any land can have a little piece of it, a piece that you can grow things on, that you can have sunshine on, that you can meet your friends on,” said Tree, 25. “There’s nobody who controls it. There’s nobody who’s selling you something.”

    Such passionate advocacy has become a perennial rite at the small patch of green just south of the campus and a few paces east of Telegraph Avenue.

    It began more than half a century ago, in 1969, when the UC system’s founding campus announced its plan for development on what was then an empty lot. Hundreds of students and community activists had another idea, dragging sod, trees and flowers to the lot and proclaiming it People’s Park. The university responded by erecting a fence.

    The student newspaper, the Daily Californian, urged students to “take back the park.” More than 6,000 people marched down Telegraph, where they were confronted by law enforcement. In the clash that followed, one man died and scores were injured.

    In the decades since, the university has made repeated efforts to reclaim the property, once attempting to construct a parking lot on the edge of the park. A new generation of demonstrators arrived, with shovels and picks, to uproot the asphalt and restore plant life.

    In the early 1990s, a young machete-wielding activist infuriated by the university’s construction of volleyball courts at the park was shot and killed by police after she broke into the campus residence of then-Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien. Police said they found a note in the teenager’s bag. It read: “We are willing to die for this piece of land. Are you?”

    The push for the university to develop the property gained new life after Christ became chancellor in 2017 amid a student housing crisis. With Berkeley providing housing to a lower percentage of its students than any other UC campus, Christ promised to double the number of beds within a decade. She made it clear that she considered People’s Park — long a “third rail” that campus leaders avoided — a good location for housing.

    Activists gather on a rooftop in People's Park.

    The tensions over UC Berkeley’s efforts to develop People’s Park have spawned more than half a century of activism and debate.

    (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

    Opponents of the housing development contend that UC Berkeley has not done enough to study alternative sites. Their cause got a boost in December, when a unit of the National Trust for Historic Preservation wrote a letter calling for “exploring all possible opportunities” for preservation of the park.

    The university counters that its plan does acknowledge the historic nature of the park while also trying to resolve problems that have plagued the site and nearby streets in recent years, including homeless encampments, open drug use, petty theft and violence. UC Police Chief Yogananda Pittman characterized this week’s action as necessary to provide members of the community with “the safety and security they need and deserve.”

    The university released results of a survey in 2021 that showed students favor the project by 56% to 31%. More recently, in an effort to address complaints that the proposed development would displace unhoused people living in the park, the university hired a full-time social worker and said most park denizens had been relocated to a Quality Inn and offered support services.

    But the project suffered a setback early last year when a state appellate court ruled that UC had not properly complied with the California Environmental Quality Act, a decades-old law known as CEQA, which requires state and local governments to consider the environmental impacts of certain construction and housing projects. The court found the university had not properly addressed the issue of noise — specifically the noise generated by students who might drink and hold “unruly parties,” as some neighbors asserted in documents submitted to the court.

    The court also ruled that the campus had not properly justified its decision not to consider alternative locations for the housing development. UC attorneys have said that because the project’s aim is to repurpose the park, no alternative would suffice.

    The university appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court and also turned to the Legislature. Lawmakers passed a law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, designed to make it easier for universities to build housing and overcome lawsuits from residents who raise noise concerns as a potential problem.

    All parties in the dispute await a decision by the high court, and the new law presumably will factor into its deliberations.

    The last concerted effort by UC to take control of the park for construction came in August 2022. Just hours after an Alameda County judge issued a tentative ruling that the university could begin clearing the park, construction machinery moved into place. But the 2 a.m. operation soon drew protesters who confronted construction crews, toppling a newly erected chain-link fence and streaming into the park, where they were tackled by California Highway Patrol officers.

    By day’s end, the university ended the standoff by suspending its effort to take control of the park.

    Berkeley City Councilmember Kate Harrison issued a public letter this week calling on police involved in any new go-round with protesters to “follow the City of Berkeley’s rules concerning use of ‘less-lethal’ weapons and tactics,” which include a ban on the use of pepper spray and tear gas. Harrison added: “These rules, established to protect human life and people’s first amendment rights, are core to our City’s value.”

    Staff photographer Jason Armond contributed to this report.

    Hannah Wiley, Jessica Garrison, James Rainey

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  • Metrolink service closes for four days, starting today

    Metrolink service closes for four days, starting today

    The transportation system of Los Angeles has been beset by labor unrest, arson, presidential motorcades, civil disobedience and just too much traffic. But a four-day stoppage affecting train service this week is more mundane — and perhaps even beneficial in the longer run.

    Beginning today, Metrolink service will be suspended for maintenance and enhancements, capping a three-year modernization project.

    Trains will not run on any part of Metrolink’s six-county system through the end of Friday and will resume normal service on Saturday.

    The disruption was scheduled to coincide with a lighter period for those who commute to work — precisely unlike the disruption this month when demonstrators pressing for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war blocked the 110 Freeway and then, later, blocked access to Los Angeles International Airport.

    “We scheduled this work on dates of historically low ridership and are working hand-in-hand with our transit partners to identify alternate transportation options for those who will be impacted,” Metrolink CEO Darren Kettle said in a statement.

    Metrolink has provided customers with alternative routing options on its website.

    Metrolink and other public transit systems have struggled to recover ridership since the COVID-19 pandemic — and a better, more efficient ride is part of the plan.

    “Placing our system temporarily out of service was necessary,” Justin Fornelli, Metrolink’s chief of program delivery, said in a statement. “This unique break in service will allow us to tackle state-of-good-repair projects across multiple lines.”

    Metrolink is operated by the Southern California Regional Rail Authority and serves Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and North San Diego counties.

    The service is a major cog in a local public transit system that is trying to overcome problems that include inadequate regional coverage as well as crime and drug use.

    The required modernization work will restrict access in and out of downtown’s Union Station, the terminus for six of Metrolink’s seven service lines, as well as the agency’s Central Maintenance Facility, where passenger cars are cleaned and locomotives are serviced daily.

    The work will encompass replacing 1930s-era signal relay technology with a “state-of-the-art, microprocessor-driven signal system, allowing Metrolink to simultaneously run multiple trains on multiple tracks as they enter and depart,” the agency said. The increased capacity is expected to reduce delays and improve safety.

    Among other planned projects are repairing concrete on platforms, painting, cleaning canopies and gutters, adding more emergency lighting, and servicing high-voltage components.

    Teams also will replace rail on the curvy, mountainous Antelope Valley Line, reducing the need for “slow orders,” which can lead to delays.

    “By modernizing our rail network, we are preparing our system for the World Cup, Olympics and Paralympics,” the agency said.

    During the closure, Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner will bypass Union Station entirely.

    “Passengers traveling to or from LAX can utilize bus connections from either Glendale or Fullerton, depending on the specific train they are traveling on,” Amtrak advised. “Bus seats are limited.”

    Union Station will not be in total shutdown. Other transit providers will continue to operate, including the L.A. Metro light rail and subway service, Amtrak bus connections, LAX FlyAway bus service and LADOT and municipal bus routes. Union Station restaurants and other businesses also will remain open.

    Metrolink has posted online a page with answers to questions riders are likely to have.

    The agency has secured $2.4 billion for recent and ongoing improvements — part of a $10-billion wishlist for priority projects. The Southern California Regional Rail Authority relies on local, state and federal funding sources for its projects.

    Howard Blume

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