Students target L.A. River site upgrade
By Becky Oskin
Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES - Four miles of bike paths, parks and wetlands, even fishing piers, is the vision of a Harvard design project focused on reclaiming one of the Los Angeles River's bleakest stretches.

The landscape architecture students were charged with developing workable alternatives for an industrial area of the river from its meeting with the Arroyo Seco to the boundary between the cities of Los Angeles and Vernon.

The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority funded their work, part of a Harvard graduate design school seminar.

The four sites include a garbage-truck yard just above the Arroyo Seco-Los Angeles River confluence; a 170-acre Union Pacific rail yard in Los Angeles; a concrete aggregate facility just south of the rail yard; and the Rio Vista Bluff behind a Sears warehouse on Olympic Boulevard.

After touring the river and consulting with county Public Works, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the Army Corps of Engineers, environmental groups, government officials and residents, the students chose to focus on three goals.

Providing outdoor space for recreation and new housing was one of the most important, said student Anna Kaufmann. Creating east/west links for people living on either side of the river was another concern. The third goal was regional in scope restoring and re-creating animal habitat and water cleansing with plants and percolation basins, Kaufmann said.

The group brainstormed without constraints but was bounded by real-world conditions such as the need to control flooding, said teacher George Hargreaves.

For instance, removing the concrete flood-control channel would mean expanding the riverbed four to seven times its current width, said student Alissa Puhm not very practical in an area already lacking space for redevelopment.

"We're not trying to re-create the river as it was, but trying to re-create a working system that can deal with flooding," Puhm said.

Environmental groups have already targeted the rail yards studied by the Harvard students for parks and greenways. While residential population along the river has grown in recent years, heavy industry has lagged and many believe the industrial areas are prime for redevelopment and reclamation.

But achieving their vision of four miles of river park is a 20- to 30-year project, the students acknowledged.

Still, it's a laudable effort that dovetails with attempts to create a state park near the river, said Tim Brick, director of the Arroyo Seco Foundation. The group hopes to develop the Arroyo Seco-Los Angeles River confluence into a regional park.

"Most people don't even realize where the Arroyo Seco meets the L.A. River," Brick said. "A beautiful entry point there will really set the tone for people who are driving along the Arroyo Seco Parkway, also known as the Pasadena (110) Freeway."

-- Becky Oskin can be reached at (626) 578-6300, Ext. 4451, or by e-mail at becky.oskin@sgvn.com