L.A. City Planning Commission unanimous in vote to move forward.
By P.C. Staff
At an Oct. 9 meeting where key decisions on two agenda items concerned with whether to move forward with plans to raze and redevelop Los Angeles Cold Storage were voted on, opponents were dealt a setback when the Los Angeles City Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve the two items and allow for the next step in the process — final approval by the L.A. City Council — to take place.
Although the vote to move forward with plans to massively redevelop the privately owned Little Tokyo-adjacent property were disappointing for Little Tokyo Community Council Executive Director Kristin Fukushima, who was at the meeting to present her group’s opposition to the $2 billion, 7.6-acre mixed-use project (see related commentary here and the Dec. 20, 2024, Pacific Citizen at tinyurl.com/2hpsydcs), she believes there is still room to speak out against the Fourth & Central project and also exact some concessions — an increase in the number of affordable housing units among the approximately 1,600 residential units, for example — at the proposed massive construction site.
LTCC’s Kristin Fukushima speaks at a February 2024 news conference in L.A. (Photo: George Toshio Johnston)
“There’s at least two more moments where we will be asking folks to come out and continue to advocate for the community,” Fukushima told the Pacific Citizen. “For us, we will just continue that campaign where we have been so far in discussions with the project team to see if there are adjustments they can make to the project to make it more palatable to the community.”
In addition to Fukushima, who was at the meeting with LTCC Community Organizer Hana Noguchi to speak in opposition to the project, also speaking in opposition as an individual was Yukio Kawaratani, a retired urban planner who worked for the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles from 1962-93, who told the City Planning Commission, “The Fourth & Central project will cause much harm to Little Tokyo.”
Echoing Kawaratani’s perspective, Fukushima told Pacific Citizen that the impacts the Fourth & Central project could have on Little Tokyo include “driving up real estate prices, driving up rent” and “ushering in more changes for the neighborhood at a time when we’re already seeing a lot of changes and displacement related to that change.”
She added, “We know it won’t be happening in the heart of Little Tokyo, but we’ve also seen over and over how changes that happen on our periphery start to really creep in from the edges or toward the center.”
A company that had been associated with Fourth & Central, Denver-based Continuum Partners, has dropped out.
Speaking to the LTCC’s role with regard to Fourth & Central, Fukushima said, “Our mission is to protect, promote and preserve Little Tokyo. We are not saying all developments are bad or that we are against change, but as the city and the world around us is changing a lot, Little Tokyo is something that we have felt is really in danger of losing, this place, this very special community that has been built up over 140 years.”
Related Story: “A First Small Step Before a Giant Leap,” April 26, 2024, Pacific Citizen, https://www.pacificcitizen.org/a-first-small-step-before-a-giant-leap/.
