The Death of Playa Vista
By John
Davis
When the ill-founded project
first reared it’s ugly head in the early nineties the strategy was clear:
Bowl over the local communities with so many projects simultaneously that it
would be impossible to defend against.
Foist tens of thousands of new car trips
onto the existing over-capacity roads then cry “Our project needs a super
highway to replace Lincoln!”, asking for welfare checks from the people to
pay for it. Finally, sell the damned thing, grab the profits and run, leaving
the City liable for any number of pending disasters. It all sounded good at the
time.
And to what benefit for
Venetians? Playa Vista’s gifts to Venice would be many. Tons of toxic air
pollution would be introduced into the lungs of our society. Small business and
parking on Lincoln would be taken. Sunrise along Highway One in the Ballona
Valley would be replaced with a pale of eternal shadow. Frogs whose voices once
climbed high in a frolicking chorus would be plowed under the earth in silence
immemorial.
The open space and wetlands
our people have enjoyed for centuries would be replaced by grotesque
super-densified habitats fit only for sub-humans. Centinella Creek which once
meandered along the Bluffs, home to ducks and fish, would be taken by bulldozers
and replaced with sewer pipes.
They
would build it, force us to widen our streets, choke us with air pollution,
remove our open space and wetlands, then demand we subsidize the juggernaut with
corporate welfare.
Who could possibly
challenge this armada of doom? And of course the Los City Council could not
resist passage on these ships riding a foul wind of
greed.
Led by our former City
Councilwoman’s spooning of the first golden shovel full of the Ballona
wetlands, it began. Who could possibly challenge this shotgun approach? A
handful of poor environmentalists? The Communities? Haw Haw Haw they roared, we
have come to slash and burn your lands and you must bow to our demands. We are
mighty multi-national corporations and our minions are Governor Davis and the
former local Councilwoman. Our lapdog Caltrans will bring large noisy yellow
machines to level your cherished community and lay out steaming, stinking
asphalt over you all, and you will pay for it. Haw Haw Haw. Greed just does not
get any better than this they
chortled.
How they underestimated
Justice, the soul of Venice. They failed to see those who would lead the charge
for Venice in the legal realm.
Justice is
rising.
Phase One Playa Vista has
been sued with plaintiffs demanding a Subsequent Environmental Impact Report
requesting the courts examine new circumstances arising from oil field gas
dangers that were not considered in the original Environmental Impact
Report.
The California Supreme Court is
considering two lawsuits filed to save the Ballona West Bluffs and a
seventy-five million-dollar lien has been filed over the same land by a local
tribal leader.
The roadway improvements
Playa Vista promised have been in large part denied by the Coastal Commission or
are challenged in Court.
Phase
Two is nothing less than a lawsuit
magnet.
Hollywood even chimed in as
a good-hearted filmmaker produced a wonderful documentary on the subject that
played on PBS TV stations throughout the nation and in theaters. Movie stars
like Ed Asner, Martin Sheen, and Ed Begley Jr. pitched in their talent as did
musicians Joni Mitchell, Joe Walsh and Kenny Loggins hoping to help.
Playa Vista failed to predict the
power of Neighborhood Councils that would smite them with truth in Phase Two
excepting the weak and gutless Westchester NC leadership that even ignored the
pleas of their own people.
Both the
Venice and Mar Vista Neighborhood Councils have exposed the flaws in what is
called the Village at Playa Vista. The only people that would want to live there
would be village idiots, for only fools would go near
it.
Most importantly Playa Vista
underestimates the intelligence of would-be
buyers.
Smacking of Hitlerian
architecture interspersed with a hungover Las Vegas facade, the project looks
like the skeleton of a failed and abandoned Hollywood movie set. No people, only
the winds carrying dust and diesel stench. Crushed burrowing owls, Hawk nests
ripped from the trees and the ancestors of Native Americans being tossed into
white plastic buckets are the project’s legacy.
Playa Vista calls this treating the
ancestors with respect. With true respect they would be left where they lay.
Could Playa Vista get away with the same type of development at Forrest Lawn?
Of course not. Why should the ancestors of Native Americans be treated with any
less respect than those of whites?
And
what is for sale? Sardine can housing being built on a dangerous, leaking oil
and gas field, over a destroyed wetlands, in a State designated Seismic Hazard
Zone bisected by the deadly Charnock Fault, at risk of Tsunami and flooding from
major storm events.
No wonder they say
they are selling million dollars homes for less. It will be a miracle if they
can give them away once buyers know the truth. What worse fate to live in a
place like that, unable to escape because cars would be rendered useless due to
gridlock. A shaky titanic like development sinking into the murky bog, in a fog
of oil field gasses.
Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust, Playa Vista is not for
us.
Posted: Thu - January 1, 2004 at 07:42 PM