Open Thread for Monday
What is it? Steve Lopez details the latest silliness downtown and yes, Eli Broad is mixed up in this one too.If you've seen what looks like a new Magic Mountain style roller coaster going up off the 101 Freeway downtown, then you've seen the latest LAUSD boondoggle - a piece of art to adorn a $230 million arts high school.
Towering 140 feet above the freeway the "artwork," according to the "artist" "calls out and engages the city, asking students and adults to indulge their imaginations."
Actually it's asking the taxpayers to indulge the $49 million price tag on this part of the overall project.
What say you?
Labels: eli broad, lausd, steve lopez
Posted by Michael Higby @ 5/05/2008 03:00:00 AM
17 Comments:
I saw that Blade Runner/rollercoaster-looking abomination this Saturday driving down the 101. Holy **** is it ugly. That's the first good look at it I've gotten this year. Maybe it won't look that bad when it's finished, but if not, maybe Kim Jong Il can conduct a nuke test on it. I won't mind.
the building is now supposed to cost $230K up from $80K when Romer first approved it. Thanks to Broad's insistence on adding this slide thing and other escalating costs -- but he's not paying for any of it. SO WET SPOT ON YOUR POST THAT HE;S UNHAPPY WITH THE MAYOR FOR NOT KISSING BUTT TO HIS FAVE PROJECTS ENOUGH, WHO CARES. He's a jerk -- we have to pay for this, just so "his" downtown looks like a real city complete with futuristic school. Damn the kids who have no schools at all which is most of the city, including and especially the middle class and "rich" areas, who aren't part of the city's social experiment to pull up a few immigant schools.
Bet the project will soar even higher, to maybe $350 mil or 500, with construction materials and trucking costs way up. Broad seems to have put another one over on the taxpayers, like he did downtown (now left to Middle East oil money) and with LACMA, where he took back his promise of giving them art but got his name on the new building anyway, just for loaning art.
What the city needs is an Economic Development Office to attract small businesses with mutual benefit.
It looks like the aftermath of a nuke attack!
Imagine what it's going to look like after the grafitti "artists" get through with it...Are they going to feature grafitti art classes??? After all, grafitti is considered to be an integral part of the L.A. Scene!
Feliz Cinco de Mayo! What do think about Ed Reyes being on the Cypress Park Parade? Did anyone see
afterward? He just took off, did not even stay for the event. What kind of Councilman are you? The Community has more respect for Guillermo Reyes that you.
this is the first I've seen of it and while i hate it as design, I LOVE IT as our payback for choosing Villaraigosa "and his allies" to office.
don't love it? too bad! this is the idiot who us idiots elected.
807am
The reason why ed was not around and was in hiding is because he was meeting ALICE CORONA you people know her as the other woman,or the the slut he gave 1.5 million tax dollars for that LAS VILLAS project in LINCOLN HEIGHTS!
I saw it a few months ago when I visited the cathedral. I thought it was an industrial site. That tower with ramps looks exactly like a gravel plant. I haven't seen it recently. It's actually "art?"
Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen (tips hat):
Of course Mister Ed took off. (Laughs) He's like his comrades, His Nibbs and Smee Nunez. (Whispers) I think those two missed their true calling; instead of being in public office, they should have been air freight pilots. Now those guys have take-offs down to a fine science, savvy?
Don't forget about the granddaddy of a budget-buster, Belmont Learning Center (over $400 million and about $500 million with all related costs included).
Last September, KCET had a part of their "Life and Times" program feature Belmont, and comments representing several views. Some excerpts from transcript for consideration:
http://www.kcet.org/lifeandtimes/archives/200709/20070914.php
"Monica Garcia>> There's been a long-awaited pressure to be relieved from overcrowding and have greater instructional opportunities. We're just thrilled that the school is moving along so smoothly.
Sam Louie>> David Tokofsky is a former LAUSD school board member and high school social studies teacher. For most of his twelve years on the board, he opposed the massive school.
David Tokofsky>> It's a star-crossed project. It's the "Belmonster". It never stops.
Sam Louie>> Vista Hermosa owns the distinction of being the most expensive school in the nation and the prospect of making money by combining retail and housing never materialized here.
Monica Garcia>> The lessons learned from the Belmont Learning Center experience have saved California and Los Angeles Unified School District a lot of dollars because we now are forced to evaluate the land before we start school construction. That was not the case back in the 1990s when this school was first purchased.
Monica Garcia>> Vista Hermosa means "beautiful view" and I think what that represented for the coalition at the time is the belief that this could be a beautiful view for our community.
David Tokofsky>> It sounds like a developer's name that they would invent to market something and it's done a good job to change the image from the Belmont Learning Complex, but everyone still knows this place as Belmont."
There're doing it again but do the numbers register with Monica Garcia and her crew?
Yeah, Monica, the lesson registered, all right. L A Weekly has the story about a school going up above a toxic waste dump in East Hollywood, another one the parents and teachers don't want -- one teacher who's been parking her car on the lot thinks her breast cancer may be tied to it.
Meanwhile, schools all over town, especially the middle and upper middle class areas, either have NO schools, or they've been taken over by affirmative action illegals and blacks from the hood for decades, might as well be IN those areas for all the difference. Gangs, anti- white/ anglo hostility, etc. BUT the P C whites screamed "racism" at anyone who pointed that out.
NOW some of them are mad -- like Tract 7260, the tract that's always mad and at war with their Councilman and the city about something, just woke up and realized that even those schools that have attracted locals like Westwood Charter, are over-croweded and pulling work permits. Tney blame this on develeopers and their local councilman again, but this has been going on for decades --
LAUSD gets almost $11/000/ child, more than San Diego and Manhattan Beach -- NOT counting the hundreds of millions wasted on these building boondoggles and payroll failures -- money has nothing to do with the failure, it's the illegals who are attracted to a sanctuary city. And the Greedy Teacher's UNION, UTLA, which battles charters because they're only concerned with their own salary, seniority and benefits for life.
http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1&attid=0.1&disp=attd&view=att&th=1191781131350675
The top of the "roller coaster" would make a great plank for Captain Jack.
G'day, Mister Spot and Captain Sparrow!
That contraption that passes for art... will it be lit up with lights for pilots to avoid in the dark? If so, look for it to be more dark then lit - 'specially if one remembers all the copper wire thieves steal from freeways.
It seems to me the designer of that tower was inspired by the innards of a gumball machine. The whole thing looks positively ghastly to me!
"WASTE MOUNTAIN ROLLER COASTER ON GRAND AVE."
Everytime the School Board starts talking about Cathedrals to Education, I cringe. That's over 500 million for about 2,000 seats. Wow.
But there is so much more to this story than what Steve Lopez reported.
This story began the day Caprice Young was elected with a ton of Eli Broad money. During her four years, the decision was made to have the Board vacate their North Grand headquarters and purchase a building owned in part by none other than Eli Broad and his friends. I think the purchase price was around 90 million. Broad's cut was 20%.
The move was made ostensibly to allieviate over crowding at Old Belmont High School where each day around 3,500 students were being bused out of the area, some as far as West Hills.
After purchasing the Beaudry Building, a decision was made not to make N. Grand into Little Belmont, but rather to build the Eli Broad School for Fine Arts. A magnet. So while 3,500 students climb onto busses to be shipped out of downtown, another 2,000 will climb on other busses to travel to downtown.
While I do not believe for a minute that any money changed hands between Broad and Young, it was clearly a payback for a political benefactor.
That subsequent school boards did not stop this is almost criminal, but Steve Lopez should have told the whole story, not just the ending.
Broad was part of an investment group that sold the land to LAUSD for 90K, and he allegedly got 20% of that. This was pushed through by Genethia Hayes, who'd won a position on LAUSD with HIS money, so it was quid pro quo. -- Another example of why he's a billionaire, he's a USER of taxpayer money, shameless, and gets away with it. Not only gets away with it, but gets HIS name on some of these buildings after milking taxpayers and taxpayer-supported institutions like LACMA.
Yes Brent, that is what I call holding their feet to the fire. You should be relaying all your information somewhere (I don't know who with that sucky school board member of yours) because I know that you know "where the bodies are buried".
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