Master Planning of Angels Gate Park - Let 'er Rip
Disclosure - I'm the Visual Arts Director for the Cultural Center, so this is from the shameless self promotion department. That being said, I'm really excited to see this process go forward. Below is our PR for the first public meeting.
Master Planning of Angels Gate Park:
Angels Gate Cultural Center announces
the first public workshop.
We need your ideas, thoughts and comments!
This event launches the process which will result in a Master Plan for Angels Gate Cultural Center and the 64-acre coastal Angels Gate Park. Stakeholders from the L.A. region are encouraged to attend and share your ideas regarding the future of this important cultural site. Please join us - your input is important!
Meeting Details
SATURDAY
APRIL 21, 2007
10:00 AM to NOON
Refreshments will be served
Angels Gate Cultural Center
Building H
Angels Gate Park
3601 S. Gaffey Ave.
San Pedro, CA 90731
Directions at www.angelsgateart.org/visiting.html
For more information visit www.angelsgateart.org/planning/index.html
Master Planning of Angels Gate Park:
Angels Gate Cultural Center announces
the first public workshop.
We need your ideas, thoughts and comments!
This event launches the process which will result in a Master Plan for Angels Gate Cultural Center and the 64-acre coastal Angels Gate Park. Stakeholders from the L.A. region are encouraged to attend and share your ideas regarding the future of this important cultural site. Please join us - your input is important!
Meeting Details
SATURDAY
APRIL 21, 2007
10:00 AM to NOON
Refreshments will be served
Angels Gate Cultural Center
Building H
Angels Gate Park
3601 S. Gaffey Ave.
San Pedro, CA 90731
Directions at www.angelsgateart.org/visiting.html
For more information visit www.angelsgateart.org/planning/index.html
15 Comments:
I hope the Master Planning includes a 1,215-seat senior high school right up there where the center is.
LAUSD has a new scheme to forget about the 2,025-seat school at Ponte Vista in favor of an810-seat school at Ponte Vista AND a 1,215-seat school on about 12 of the approximately 28 remaining open acres it owns at Angels Gate.
Think new parking lot and/or new swimming pool up there. They still haven't taken the time to imagine the ingress and egress to the new proposed school. That will take some real thinking, I feel.
The details about the new proposals, about as much as they gave out at the meeting, can be found at www.pontevista.blogspot.com.
Perhaps if and when heads stop exploding by folks learning of this new proposed school, perhaps the neighbors and everyone would be willing to quietly tell LAUSD what they really think about their new ideas.
MW
Unfortunately, the LAUSD side of the park is being planned completely separately from the Rec and Parks side. My current understanding is that the LAUSD is converting most of their side into an overnight, year-round nature camp for elementary and junior hifh school age kids.
Angels Gate Park has been suggested as a high school location in the past, but it has two problems that no one from the City or the LAUSD has addressed - there is only a single entrance to the LAUSD side of the park, and thats on a two lane street (Alma) in a residential neighborhood, and the soil toxicology of the site has never been addressed.
M Richards says:
"I hope the Master Planning includes a 1,215-seat senior high school right up there where the center is."
While I appreciate how RPV residents know what's best for SP and advocate more development in the interior of SP, I have a better idea. LAUSD should maintain their current plan and build the entire school at Ponte Vista which is centered in a nice locale for students. Angels Gate is crammed.
p.s. I love the excuses that the Palos Verdes politicos are making about possible state legislation to build more affordable housing; to the effect (with noses in air) "well, huhh, ah, we caaan't have any of that here, why, ah, we have unstable land etc...blah blah" Transparent BS.
I would also like to see the entire school at Ponte Vista, primarily because that school needs to serve communities closer to that site. Building a large high school at Angels Gate could create a number of really brutal traffic bottlenecks, especially at Alma and 25th.
Hey anonymous 9:50, San Pedro is part of my community. We should all be in this together.
Furthermore, I laughed out loud when I learned about SRHS #15 and my initial response was that it is DOA. To put a 1,215 seat campus where they want to build it brings up so many issues and problems that cannot easily be ignored, that they probably listen to Mr. Kleiner and just build a 9th grade academy At Angels Gate and forget about building a school for four grades at the site.
What makes you 9:50 think that I really know what is best for OUR community? I am calling for compromise. What the final outcome is anybody's guess right now.
You have brought up front something that I was concerned about though, and thank you for this. It now looks like folks who live closer to Angels Gate will begin to feel the heat from development that OUR community is feeling in northwest San Pedro and surroundings. I don't think OUR community wants to see five public senior high schools no matter where they are built in San Pedro.
I am afraid this new proposal might divide OUR community even more. I certainly understand about problems down on Alma near where SRHS #15 is now being planned near. There is no way that roadway could possibly support being a route for a 1,215-seat school. The idea of building a new road from Gaffey has many, many problems and I know that folks on the north and south sides of the existing site would not like traffic going through their neighborhoods.
Just a heads up 9:50, I first became aware of Emily Street, between 36th and 37th when my grandfather moved a house from where the V.T. Bridge was being built to the 3600 block of Emily.
That same house was very important to me when I worked to prepare it for sale at the beginning of 2006, when the current owner, my mother, had to leave the home she loved and move to an assisted living environment. When some jerk claims that folks in RPV seem to think they know what is best for San Pedro and the surrounding communities, they make themselves out to be the fools they really are.
Slur me as much as you care to do under the banner of anonymity, or sack up and make some real suggestions to improve OUR entire community.
MW
No need to take it so personally, Mr. "Richards". There's no conspiracy to slur you on the Internet; I think Annie 9:50 just misunderstood you.
I'm not sure why the LAUSD, in a time of declining enrollment, needs to build a new senior high school at Angels Gate or at the former Navy housing site, but what do I know?
Howdy imbg,
Your opinion counts, too. You know about the declining enrollment, and I am not convinced that 500-seat schools can't be built in different areas.
What do you think should be built, or if anything should be built at all. If you live down near Point Fermin, perhaps you have a clearer picture about what your neighbors might think about any new school at Ponte Vista.
I had heard from one source that folks in that area will not even bother with petitions, they'll just head to court, and that certainly is their right.
MW
M Richards,
9:50 here. No need to get defensive or resort to name calling as I had no intention to "slur" you. And no need to play the SP authenticity game, we all have our credentials and hard luck stories (but I actually live in SP now, and at least in my book that counts for something). But it's hard to tell from your somewhat convoluted words just what your position is. Let me be clear: IMO LAUSD should NOT back off from their initial plan to build the entire high school near the corner of Western and PV north no matter how much Bisno yacks. As much as another high school s**ks, IF it has to go somewhere, the former navy housing site is the logical choice.
p.s. keep up your good work in fighting for R-1 at the former navy site. Much appreciated
Thanks 9:50/10:40,
I am sorry my word seem convoluted.
Let me try to see if I can explain it better.
First, to have any new public school of any size at Ponte Vista is a bad idea in my book. Any new school would be in too close proximity to many other schools that are either in use or being constructed. If a new public high school were built at Ponte Vista it would be very close to the new Mary Star campus. It would also be almost across the street from Dodsom middle school which is also nearby. Also there is Cooper Continuation H.S. (yes it does have a few students attending it), Taper Avenue Elementary and Rolling Hills Prep are close, but not as close as the other two high schools and the middle school.
Any school built at Ponte Vista would have students would would have normally attended Narbonne attending a school in San Pedro. Would this be a good idea? I have some problems with making students who live in the Harbor City, Lomita, and Harbor Gateway areas having to come to San Pedro to get their education. I live within earshot of In-n-Out so the thought of having rival high schools meetin the parking lot by the restaurant does not appeal to me in the slightest.
For the new prposed 1,215 seat school at Angels Gate, I have real problems with trying to find routes that would be acceptable for students who have cars to get access to the campus. There really is not a good large roadway that could support a campus where not only did faculty and staff need access to, but also students who have cars.
I know there are already education facilities at Angels Gate, but to try and have such a school with students with cars, makes that site fairly out of reach IMHO.
A 9th. grade academy style school at Angels Gate is something that Neil Kleiner has been talking about. I think a school for just that grade level would need to have about 1,000 seats, but I don't think many 9th. grade students should be allowed to drive to school, even if they happened to be 16-years old. To be that old and still in the 9th. grade is something that may be rare, but it could happen.
So, perhaps a 9th. grade academy could be considered at Angels Gate. I wish LAUSD would consider more 500-seat schools spread out over many sites. As it is, both new schools would have approximately 500-seat small learning centers combined to make the larger campuses.
I wrote to the folks who work for Rod Hamilton at LAUSD and thought that the Mulligan Family recreation business had the room to build a 810-seat school on it. I think allowing the students at Narbonne to stay closer to their homes would be better. This may be a compromise that LAUSD has not considered. But I do like that they are a group who finally has gotten the message that compromise is what should work in finding solutions.
So, 9:50, I think no school of any kind or size at Ponte Vista, and only PERHAPS a 9th grade academy at Angels Gate, but only if other compromises cannot be found.
Thank you and I apologize for my foul writing. I usually don't use that kind of language, but I did, and I was a jerk for using bad words.
Where I live now in RPV was thought of as being a part of San Pedro until it was annexed into RPV. They held that vote when I was living in a whole different county. To many of us in Eastview, it isn't our fault we are in RPV, but we need to live with that fact and remain San Pedrans in our hearts.
MW
Thanks MW, no need to apologize. I can tell you've put a lot of hard and sincere thought and work into this and have a lot of ties to SP. (And I know that I can have strong opinions.) BTW, I enjoyed your guest column today in MSP. You and Marconi are a good tag team..
bring down the fence! the chain link fence around angels gate that is
MW:
I would want to see some hard evidence that a new school or schools is/are needed in Pedro before letting LAUSD build one anywhere.
I have no idea what people in the Point Fermin area think should be built "at Ponte Vista." I do know that some people in the area kind of resent losing the right-of-way through Angels Gate, between the gate on Alma and the gate on Gaffey. Up until a few years ago, you could walk or drive through during daylight hours. This is no longer the case, presumably because of the "security" requirements of the school that currently sits on the site (and the current social paradigm that assumes normal public schools to be on lockdown like prisons). Building another school, "academy style" (whatever that means) or otherwise, on the premises probably wouldn't help this situation any.
But to me, the whole question of which neighborhood should pick up the NIMBY bat and knock the new school(s) into which other neighborhood is premature. LAUSD needs to come up with some convincing evidence that any of these schools are necessary, anywhere, in light of the enrollment numbers. I'm not saying they can't, I'm just saying that they don't appear to have done it yet.
Thanks imbg, for your comments.
When I was little and visiting my grandparents house on Emily street, access to the site was no problem. There was a nice hole in the fence right near the turn from Emily to 36th. Street. It was still Army owned back then, but nobody caught me.
I used the Alma to Gaffey cut through when I needed to and don't like the closed gate on Alma.
MW
I miss the right of way from Angels Gate Park to Alma, because it made it a hassle for me to enjoy the totally unused basketball court at the continuation school, and it shortened my route to Busy Bee.
Make that lengthened my route to Angels Gate.
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