2. Westlake 2025 | 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction 3
A Note on Names 4
What is Creative Placemaking? 5
Westlake Macarthur Profile: The Heart Of Los Angeles 7
Challenges 8
Actors: Building The Team 11
Centering the Plan: Process & Outcomes 13
Process
Outcomes
Action Stages 13
Phase 1: Reassembling Westlake 13
Partners
Outcomes
Phase II: Street Vendors, Arts Entrepreneurships, 15
Gardens and Health Connections
Partners
Outcomes
Phase III: Park Futures 19
Partners
Outcomes
Conclusion 22
Citations 24
3. Westlake 2025 | 3
THE HEART OF LOS ANGELES; CREATIVE PLACEMAKING FOR WESTLAKE 2020
INTRODUCTION:
Los Angeles is has always been a vibrant and visionary city. Angelenos embrace new
ideas and new ways of living readily. Our city is home to incredibly diverse residents and
industries. Although we are most famous for our film industry, Los Angeles is also one
of the top US cities engaged in the production of visual arts, with the second highest
number of visual artists residents in the United States, following after New York City.1
Supporting these artists would benefit the city in many ways, but to truly thrive Los
Angeles should turn it’s focus towards growing more of these artists at home, in the
dense cores of Los Angeles. This plan focuses on the Westlake/MacArthur Park
Neighborhood, which is a central core located to the immediate west of Downtown Los
Angeles.
The neighborhood of Westlake/MacArthur Park is located close to the eastern terminus
of Wilshire Boulevard near downtown Los Angeles and centered around MacArthur
Park. In 1890 the park built on top of a dump on an alkali lake at what was then the
Western edge of the city of Los Angeles was named Westlake. The park, which
improved the lake with additional fresh water fed by the city’s zanja system turned into
an instant success, and 4 years after it was built it was the site of boat rides and
promenades. By 1900 what had been the western edge of the city was now a
fashionable neighborhood for celebrities and the wealthy.2
4. Westlake 2025 | 4
In the 1930s Wilshire Boulevard bisected the park. In the 1940s it was renamed
MacArthur Park, and was home to many of Los Angeles’s wealthy Jewish families.
Between the 40s and 70s the white populations moved to the suburbs and then a
Mexican-American population moved in and many followed the same pattern. By
the1980s the neighborhood, now the home of many refugees from Central America,
especially Guatemala and El Salvador had gained notoriety as an epicenter of crime,
notably drugs, gangs and prostitution.
Between 1990 and today the neighborhood is in a mixed state of change. The severe
rental and housing shortages of the entire city and the revitalization of Downtown Los
Angeles through the influx of a major residential population (adding some 30,000 new
residents between the 2000 and 2010 census3
) along with pressure for more units from
Koreatown residents is starting to squeeze the edges of Westlake MacArthur Park.
Meanwhile, while violence is still an issue, it has decreased steadily over the years.
While working to prepare this plan,
I’ve heard of the community concerns
regarding gentrification, a fear of
change and rent increases and the sale
of commercial properties to outside
businesses, whiter and richer
businesses. The residents of the
neighborhood worry that they will be
moved aside as policy makers seek to
capitalize on the location and iconic
architecture of the neighborhood,
without including those who live there
in these plans. Based on past patterns,
these concerns are not unfounded.
Affordable housing is scarce, and not
being built to satisfy demand. The
city’s approach to revitalization in the
past has favored large developers and
big business, and has struggled with
efforts to engage with marginalized
populations. All of the features that
once made Westlake a desirable
neighborhood for the ultra wealthy-
central location, access to streetcars
(or in this case, subways), an iconic
park, an east-west connection,
proximity to the culture center of
downtown and lovely, iconic turn of
the century architecture is still there.
A Note On Names
Although this plan will call this neighborhood
Westlake there is no absolute consensus on
what to call the area:
• The subway stop names the area
Westlake/Macarthur.
• The LA Times Mapping Project calls it
Westlake, as does CurbedLA.
• Heart Of Los Angeles (HOLA) names their
service area the Rampart District, which
appears to be what the local police call the
station in the neighborhood.
• Proposals from residents have also
suggested calling the community “Central
American Town” in order to highlight the
predominant ethnicities in the
neighborhood.
In Los Angeles this naming strategy is common
and communities do often change their names.
Within several minutes drive one can pass
through Koreatown, Little Bangladesh, Historic
Filipino Town, and Thai Town (or East
Hollywood). To the west a short segment of
Fairfax Avenue is known as Little Ethiopia.
Names are powerful. This plan will return to
the theme of the community’s name as a
necessary component of a creative placemaking
plan.
5. Westlake 2025 | 5
However, the inevitability of change, and the need for change does not mean that the
type of change itself is predetermined. This creative placemaking plan argues for an
alternate approach, one that will recharge what is now the eastern edge of Wilshire
Boulevard with an identity that celebrates its iconic past, embraces the present vitality
and character and looks towards the future of Los Angeles.
By exploring the assets and resources already available to the residents of Westlake, this
plan will argue for a new path forward that encourages the deliberate creation and
sharing of a creative and culture focused vision for the community through a creative
planning process. This approach will improve quality of life and economic prospects for
current residents, particularly the younger residents and will also (cautiously!) welcome
additional residents and businesses that are able to share in this vision.
WHAT IS CREATIVE PLACEMAKING?
The creative economy is increasingly being recognized as a crucial sector that
contributes to the success of cities. In addition to establishing distinct identities for cities
and communities, the creative sector intertwines with other city industries to enhance
the value of their products. “The Rise of the Creative Class” the 2002 best-selling book
by Richard Florida, was one of the first studies to cross over from academia into the
arena of urban policy and inform the larger public of the ways that arts enhance city
economies. Since that time, more detailed analyses, including detailed case studies, have
been conducted which confirm the benefit of the creative economy and provide detail
regarding the ways that regional creative economies work and how they interact with
traditional economic sectors.4
This research has established that investment in arts and
culture has a high rate of return within cities.
Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit advocacy organization for arts and arts education,
has been supporting this research with their study series titled “Arts and Economic
Prosperity”. Report IV, released in May 2012 stated that nationally,
“The nonprofit arts and culture industry generated $135.2 billion dollars of
economic activity—$61.1 billion in spending by nonprofit arts and culture
organizations, plus an additional $74.1 billion in spending by their
audiences...supporting 4.1 million full-time equivalent jobs, and generating
$22.3 billion in revenue to local, state and federal governments—a yield well
beyond their collective $4 billion in arts appropriations.”5
This report included specific case study information on the economic impact of non-
profit arts and culture organizations for the city of Los Angeles, CA, finding that the arts
and culture non-profits in the city generate $61,512,000 in revenue to the City.6
The argument has been made that Los Angeles is a city in need of an innovative
approach to better support the City’s artists.7
The Center for Cultural Innovation points
out the City’s creative economy is the center of “a paradox” as a city with “so many
6. Westlake 2025 | 6
creatives in Los Angeles, yet with no coherent plan or infrastructure to support them”
and argues for an approach that focuses on supporting the wide variety of artists living
in the city over the current strategy of investment in buildings, tax breaks and the film
industry.
The creative sector data illustrates the symbiotic relationships between the city and the
creator. Artists benefit from the non-profit and government support, which allows them
to remain in large cities, instead of moving to smaller cities nearby. The presence of
resident artists as both creators and consumers of arts and culture in the city enriches
existing industries and also creates new sectors.8
The field of planning focuses on how to use spaces or how to best balance the use of
space. Zoning, the most common regulatory tool of a planner, came out of the need for
cities to have a mechanism prevent incompatible uses (the school and the
slaughterhouse) from being located next to each other and to deal with other aspects of
the common good over privately and publicly owned spaces. Planning has a close
relationship to architectural studies, and that relationship informs some of the raw
materials planners work with, namely space and design.
Planning generally regulates the types of permitted uses of land and the exterior design
and arrangement of land around structures. The traditional methods of creating a plan
for these spaces are usually a large scale “master” or “general” plans- guiding policy
documents that set out a vision for the allowed types of land uses for a city or region.
These types of documents tend to focus on anticipating or speculating on what future
trends and changes might affect the area, and setting up policies to encourage or
discourage the changes. Local zoning regulations and ordinances fill in more specific
standards for the zone or specific location, and individual projects often work with or
against these regulations to further interpret what can and cannot be done.
Creative placemaking is an attempt to infuse the traditional top down approaches of
plan making with a bottom up approach that also adds a multiplier approach to
traditional community development and planning, by inserting new uses into spaces or
layering a second meaning on top existing initiatives. Additionally creative placemaking
plans articulate a roadmap for change that requires the plan to examine and wrestle
with the particulars of a place, by upending the traditionally linear processes from goal
to outcome with the insertion of arts, cultural inquiry and direct conversations on
difficult topics in order to disrupt the stories that traditional plans tell and find more
enriching paths forward.
In 1912, the labor activist Rose Schneiderman said,
"What the woman who labors wants is the right to live, not simply exist — the
right to life as the rich woman has the right to life, and the sun and music and
art. You have nothing that the humblest worker has not a right to have also.
The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too."
Bread and Roses became an enduring slogan of the labor movements of the 1920s and
‘30s and inspired a song of the same title that includes the lyric, “Hearts starve as well as
bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.”
7. Westlake 2025 | 7
The field of creative placemaking is the “Bread and Roses” approach to planning and
community development. It argues that the straightforward provision of services and the
regulation and construction of space is not sufficient to meet a hunger for improved
quality of life. Secondly it maintains that the dual approach that aims to satiate both
material needs and cultural needs, (“sun and music and art) is more beneficial than
traditional approaches, because adding arts and cultural programming creates
compounding multiplier effects that enhances community bonds and local economies,
who become more competitive by expressing regionally distinct attractions and
products.
WESTLAKE PROFILE: THE HEART OF LOS ANGELES
Westlake contains MacArthur and Lafayette Parks, local small local business, and iconic
turn of the century Los Angeles architectural gems, including a sizable stock of old
1920s era apartment buildings. Westlake is a richly transit accessible area, connected to
Downtown and Koreatown on the metro Purple Line (subway) with rail connections to
Hollywood on the Red Line, and through downtown access to the light rail for east LA,
Pasadena and south Los Angeles. The 720 metro bus, possibly one of the most popular
bus lines in the city runs through the center of this neighborhood on Wilshire Blvd.
straight out to Santa Monica.
8. Westlake 2025 | 8
Demographically speaking, Westlake is a young neighborhood. The median age in
Westlake is 27 in Westlake, which is lower than the average of 34 for the County of
Los Angeles, and it has one of the county’s highest percentages of children under the
age of ten. There are about 31,000 children in Westlake between the ages of 0-18, and
another 35,000 residents between the ages of 19 and 34.
The median household incomes in Westlake are low for the City. Comparable city
neighborhoods with similar incomes are Downtown, Boyle Heights and University Park.
Westlake’s average household income is $26,757. Only 12% of residents ages 25 and
older have a four year degree. 68% of the residents in the community are foreign born
and anecdotally it is worth speculating that there are additional uncounted immigrant
residents who do not have legal status. Westlake has an extremely high renter
population, with 95% of residents renting their homes.
Westlake has a majority Latino population. In Westlake approximately 73% of the
residents are Latino, 17% are Asian, 5% are White, and 4% are African American.
Additionally this neighborhood has a high number of residents from Central American
countries, such as El Salvador and Guatemala, whereas many of the city’s Latino
neighborhoods are more predominantly Mexican.
CHALLENGES:
Westlake faces a number of challenges.
Poverty is an issue for many residents of Westlake. Residents have a low median
income, high numbers of one parent-households, many young residents and overall low
college attainment levels. In addition many of the residents are recent immigrants and
legal status is questionable for a large portion of the community. Additionally, the
ongoing housing crisis in the city of Los Angeles, which has affected rental units across
the city since the start of the recession is cause for concern, as more than 9 in 10
residents in Westlake are renters.9
Anecdotal evidence from housing advocates and
community organizers suggests that many families in Westlake are living in over
crowded units. Westlake is a community with extremely vulnerable families.
In a city-wide comparison Westlake also has a high level of violent crime. Out of the
272 neighborhoods in the LA Times violent crimes ranking, Westlake comes in at 32nd
highest for violent crimes.10
During the last six months, the crime rates in Westlake are
higher than nearby Koreatown, but not higher than those in Silverlake or Downtown.
In particular, MacArthur Park has had a reputation for more than 30 years as a location
for gang violence and drug activity. These crimes have lessened in recent years11
due to
better policing and overall drops in violent crime rates. These quality of life issues are
direct, dire and immediate. Economic security and physical safety for residents are
9. Westlake 2025 | 9
outcomes that must part of the end goals for plans and strategies addressing Westlake’s
challenges.
However, there is a third major challenge that Westlake must face, and it’s the problem
of being known as a problem. Although it’s not actually the poorest, or the most violent
neighborhood In Los Angeles, in doing research for this plan, one can’t help but notice
that nearly every article uncovered about current community conditions dictates that
the neighborhood be presented as a formerly rich neighborhood giving way to a refugee
immigrant community plagued by violence. Even a positive article will ground itself in the
historical issues, before noting that things are getting slowly better and emphasize
outside interventions that helped. This narrative frame always places the current
residents in position of either being overwhelmed by problems or slowly being relieved
of them from external helpers.
In addition this narrative places the residents at the mercy of external forces. One
current challenge is the neighborhood fear of gentrification. Recent efforts to
“revitalize” MacArthur Park’s entrance upset community members because they felt the
changes were imposed by local government officials without any consultation with the
community. Attendees at the meeting to discuss the proposal expressed concerns that
the changes were made to make visitors and tourists feel comfortable, over the
opportunity to spend money to support the needs of residents who use the park. Issues
were raised with the generic look of the design features and the choice to spend money
on this project in particular.
These concerns speak to the challenges facing the neighborhood, who fear not only that
other groups with more income find the edges of the community attractive and move in
on both sides from Koreatown or Downtown, pricing out the current residents, but
that they believe the support of their elected city officials may go to those new residents
and those developers instead of to the current residents and businesses.12
A Curbed LA
article from 2014 titled Mapping the Huge Wave of Gentrification About to Hit Westlake
illustrates this fear’s grounding in reality, showing 12 projects in the entitlement pipeline
that will cater to higher incomes than the average Westlake resident has. This includes
several mixed-use projects with luxury apartment buildings and retail frontage. 13
This framing of helplessness both internally and externally discounts the reality of
Westlake, which is a community with massive internal agency, organization and
resiliency. There are many huge annual art and culture festivals within MacArthur Park.
The annual Feria Agostina is the largest Salvadorean cultural gathering in the United
States, with over 100,000 attendees.14
(by comparison, the LA Festival of Books is
around 150,000 attendees).15
The community is known for organizing immigration rights
rallies, including the now infamous May Day Meelee of 2007, which included police
brutality against protestors. The self-organized soccer uses in Mac Arthur Park, have
added vital cultural programming for youth without the help of, and often in resistance
to city officials.16
Street vendors, often listed as nuisance uses by preservationists and
city officials form a significant informal local economy, and persist in demands to be
10. Westlake 2025 | 10
recognized and permitted, despite both gang extortion and health department
crackdowns.17
City Councilor Gil Cedillo, the representative for Westlake has piloted the Keep it
Clean program that was the model for the Mayor’s Clean Streets Initiative.18
The
program includes a citizen participation program, and reporting method. Heart of Los
Angeles, the youth organization, who is the inspiration for this plan is a 25 year old
program that grew from 25 kids in a gym to serve 2,300 youth ages 6-24, in a 4 building
campus.
This story of Westlake is the story of persistence, by a community of survivors. Many
current inhabitants of Westlake escaped civil wars, and established themselves in a
neighborhood and language that was foreign to them. They found ways to reshape and
reknit a social fabric without the support of the city, and often in resistance to it and
while doing so persisted against violence and crime.
The story of Westlake is also a story of youth culture. Youth are not bound to the same
stories that their parents have lived. With 60% of Westlake residents under the age of
34, and 30% under the age of 18, one entire third of this community has lived their
whole life in a neighborhood that is stabilizing, not destabilizing, where personal safety
and available community networks have increased, not decreased. For these youth, by
the time they grow to be adults, “Yes We Can/Si Se Puede” will be the old campaign
slogan of one of the first presidents they ever remember. They will grow into a different
Los Angeles, and a different opportunity to for narratives that are aspirational instead of
confining.
This plan is for them.
11. Westlake 2025 | 11
ACTORS: BUILDING THE TEAM
Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA)
Heart of Los Angeles is a 25-year-old non-profit that focuses on at–risk youth. It serves
2,300 youth ages 6-24 with enrichment programs, including visual arts programs. HOLA
is located next to Lafayette Park, and works in conjunction with the City’s Recreation
and Parks department to utilize the park. It offers arts and academic enrichment
programs and includes a youth service group, the LA Rakers, for middle and high school
aged youth. This plan was designed in response to some of the questions and ideas
generated through volunteer service at HOLA with the LA Rakers.
HOLA’s mission is stated as:
“HOLA provides underserved youth with free, exceptional programs in
academics, arts and athletics within a nurturing environment, empowering them
to develop their potential, pursue their education and strengthen their
communities.”
“Street corners once occupied by gangs and overrun by criminal activity are now
safe for visiting artists, teachers, alumni and volunteers. Drugs, weapons and
spray cans are replaced with musical instruments, books, sports gear, paint
brushes and canvases. Everyone in the community is sharing lessons learned
and the local schools and the surrounding neighborhoods are becoming strong
foundations for fostering the next generation of productive and successful
contributors. Heart of Los Angeles has become a beacon center of hope that
unites partners with youth and their families to transform communities.”19
12. Westlake 2025 | 12
This plan envisions a central role for the youth from the LA Rakers program in
particular and HOLA overall. High school aged youth should be engaged as a central
voice in this plan. Aside from knowing their communities intimately, youth must be a
component of a plan that seeks to guide the future. Plans are often made with larger
number of older residents, which can skew ideas away from the needs of the youth
populations. In Westlake, with such a high percentage of youth residents, this plan must
be designed with their input. The LA Rakers are already exposed to the ideas of
community activism and service and make an ideal group to participate in this plan.
LA County Arts Commission
The LA County Arts Commission is an agency that uses a 1% development fee collected
from new buildings to commission civic arts and fund arts education across all of Los
Angeles. This plan would hope to partner with the Arts Commission to gain access to
funding, and cultural programming resources and assistance with locating artist partners
and grant organizations.
City Council District 1
City Councilor Gil Cedillo, who represents the district that contains Westlake is a
strong advocate for working class families and local economies. He is an ideal supporter
for the Westlake community plan and his office will be crucial in helping to support
certain efforts within this plan. In addition the local neighborhood councils should be
involved in this effort and members of this planning process should be drawn from their
ranks as well.
Additional Partners
Additional partners are named under each Action Phase of this Plan.
13. Westlake 2025 | 13
CENTERING THE PLAN: PROCESS AND OUTCOMES
Process:
Following the release of Westlake 2025, it will be circulated to the named partners, for
input and additional direction. If support is in place to proceed, staff will seek to obtain
funding and a team made up of partnership from the above partners and additional
groups, including those named in the Action Phases, will be assembled to assist with
implementation of the plan.
After the initial team is formed, the plan will need to secure funding, either for
implementation of the whole plan or portions. In so doing the phases of the plan may be
modified or combined to create an achievable timeframe with whatever funding is
available, and more details will be created to outline the timeframes on each phase.
Following funding, the plan will be implemented in the 3 phases and evaluated against
outcomes to see how each effort succeeds in achieving the outcomes of the plan. Lastly,
when the plan is completed these outcomes will be reported back in an evaluation that
includes recommendations and lessons a guide for other efforts and reflections on
potential next steps for additional planning in the community.
Outcomes
Successful implementation of this Cultural Plan will result in the following outcomes:
• Additional locally created and start-up creative sector and cultural jobs for
community residents.
• Increased connection, support, cooperation and recognition from government
agencies and officials towards existing informal Westlake communities and
economies (street vendors, youth groups, soccer, festivals, etc)
• External descriptions of Westlake that give agency to the community, and credit
positive stories to local actors.
• An increase in youth leadership.
• Changes to MacArthur park infrastructure to expand current uses and support
or create new uses.
ACTION STAGES
Phase 1: Reassembling Westlake
Westlake was named Westlake because the lake in MacArthur Park was the lake to the
West of the city of Los Angeles in 1890. MacArthur Park was named after General
Douglas MacArthur in 1942. Rampart District is what the local policing area is known as.
14. Westlake 2025 | 14
All of these names are used somewhat interchangeably, with Westlake having a generally
greater recognition. I believe that none of these names is in fact a truly powerful name
for this neighborhood. In light of the strong need of an external validation of community
identity, I believe that a renaming process for Westlake neighborhood and MacArthur
park would be an important first phase in creating a sense of community assets.
Renaming is also not unfamiliar to Los Angeles. Today’s Chinatown was once Little Italy,
and before that the home of Zanja Madre (Mother Ditch), the original Aqueduct that
brought water to the Pueblo of Los Angeles from the LA River. This is the same zanja
system that eventually brought water to feed the lake of Westlake. Proposals have been
made to rename Westlake to Central America Town.20
Recently a tiny portion of
Koreatown split off and renamed itself Little Bangladesh.
Although many renaming processes in Los Angeles create names that imply ethnic
enclaves, I believe a true renaming process wouldn’t simply defer to the largest single
nationality or location, but would instead seek to craft a new name that links past and
present or speaks to the many identities of the park. Westlake has had many identities,
and many heroes. Mayor William Workman created MacArthur Park; his vision for the
park was initially not supported by other city leaders. Perhaps the name Workman’s
Park would honor the founding of the area, the persistence of positive vision and create
a populist name that links nicely to the current activism in the community.
This phase would include the opportunity for many people to put forward name
proposals and offer a chance to reflect on and rediscover facets of the community.
Ultimately the renaming, whether to New Central America or Historic Workman’s
town or Zanja West, or even a decision to keep Westlake as Westlake would give the
community a frame to begin talking about values and identities as well as create a sense
of self determination, and personal choice.
15. Westlake 2025 | 15
The first step of this project would create a naming process framework that would
guide local organizations such as neighborhood councils, youth groups, restaurants,
parents, schools through an exploration of the values, history and culture that they feel
the neighborhood represents, would give an opportunity to teach basic ethnography to
many community members. In the second stage, all of the names would be presented
through arts driven initiatives such as performances in the park, temporary installations,
murals or even a painted path throughout the park to show all the names. The partner
organizations could serve as ballot collection points to vouch for voters without
requiring any official registration so that regardless of immigration status all members of
the community could participate. The Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council
uses a similar process of voting to help ensure that homeless populations get a voice.
Partners: The LA County Arts Commission would be a useful partner in supporting
the final presentation of the project or in connecting the effort to design tools that
explain the process, such as pamphlets, maps and ballots. The programming in DTLA’s
Grand Park is excellently communicated, designed and deliberately accessible. The
renaming process should reach out to that organization to see if there is support that
could be provided or mentorship available during the presentation phase. All of the local
neighborhood councils, local business associations, schools, nonprofits and other
organizations should be invited to participate as naming partners and ballot collectors.
Local media should also be invited to cover the events and provided with a clear press
packet that explains the point of self-determination and the goals behind the process of
naming. South Central Los Lastly the city councilor’s office should be asked to support
and promote the final voting efforts with the rest of the city and ensure that any
resulting names are used consistently and marked throughout.
Outcomes: The steady improvement within Westlake over the last two decades
should be recognized within the community and outside the community through the
conversations provided during a renaming discussion. Attendees at the naming events
and presentations will gain awareness of local organizations and groups that are available
as community resources. Participating organizations will guide the individual naming
teams through a process of inquiry that looks into the creation of identities and labels,
which will give participants new awareness of the area’s history, challenges and assets.
Phase II: Street Vendors, Arts Entrepreneurships, Gardens and Health
Connections
Street Vendors:
The need for more jobs in Westlake is complicated by the uneasy relationship many
residents have with the legal economy. Westlake has a large gray economy of unlicensed
street vendors, day laborers, and other unlicensed businesses. Current efforts to help
create avenues to legalize some of these street vending operations are tentative at best.
Since the 1990s efforts have been made to legalize street vendors with some successes,
and the city councilor Gil Cedillo supports legalization, yet this March, the Department
16. Westlake 2025 | 16
of Public Health raided the vendors in MacArthur Park and confiscated their
equipment.2122
The Los Angeles National
Land Trust held A Taste of
MacArthur Park on May 2,
2015, and enjoyed local
success. Additional festivals
celebrating the cuisine of
Westlake could be used to
help draw attention to the
street vendor issue and
grow support. Night
markets and food trucks
have grown in legitimacy
and popularity in recent
years and the street vendor
program should find ways
to align itself with these
partners, especially as they
can attract foodie dollars from residents outside the neighborhood as well as inside.
Successful food trucks have become a route to restaurant ownerships, most notably for
chef and restaurateur Roy Choi, whose Kogi food truck of fusion Korean tacos has
snowballed into ownerships and partnerships in at least seven restaurants across the
city. Street vending ought to be recognized as an even less costly avenue into the city’s
culinary economy. Or as Mr. Choi puts it,
“[The] bottom line is, chefs aren’t opening restaurants in South Central L.A., in
South L.A. ... For me, it’s about why do we have to accept those facts? The
people that I hang out with here, they’re not stereotypes or caricatures that you
can just put in a form. They’re living, breathing human beings that eat food just
like you. So why not open the same things you would open in any other
neighborhood, instead of just saying, ‘Oh, these are food deserts, and they’ll
never happen.’ Why won’t they happen? How the f-ck do you know it won’t
happen? How the f-ck do you know people won’t love them?
“It’s really about taking a chance,” “Five years ago, people were calling food
trucks roach coaches. People were pointing at food trucks and saying, ‘I would
never eat off that thing.’ Now, the same person who said, ‘I would not eat off
that food truck’ is hiring it for their 9-year-old kid’s birthday party.”23
17. Westlake 2025 | 17
Ultimately legalization of the
street vendors ought to create
areas within the park that allow
mobile vendors to locate and
areas around the community on
public streets where vendors
are allowed to travel or set up,
particularly food vendors.
Creating regulations could
create a positive compromise
that would encourage vendors,
but leave room for the city to
pursue nuisance vendors of
counterfeit IDs, bootleg music
and videos or unsanitary food
vendors.
Arts Entrepreneurship:
Heart of Los Angeles currently runs a visual arts program for all ages, which offers art
lessons to the youth participants. Artists For Humanity in Boston, MA and RiverzEdge
Arts in Woonsocket R.I. are arts programs that run their arts programs as
entrepreneurships. By teaching art skills in conjunction with business skills and selling
arts products created by the youth, the participants are able to partner with other
artists and businesses in their communities and beyond. This model of arts program is a
good fit for a creative placemaking plan in Westlake, as the products generated should
be used to communicate new ideas and identities for the neighborhood. The LA Rakers
group recently created tie-dye t-shirts to wear when they participate in neighborhood
clean-ups and social activism. These shirts make them recognizable ambassadors for
HOLA and the LA Rakers program in particular. All of the necessary resources are
currently present to start small with an arts entrepreneurship program that can
eventually break off and fund itself.
T-shirts, posters, and tote bags are simple products that can be used to convey a new
visual brand for Westlake. The ideas and stories collected from Phase I of this plan along
with new names, or additional creative products can be the fuel for these new designs.
Arts partnerships should be sought out to connect the youth at HOLA to downtown
arts businesses and studio resources in the greater Los Angeles Area. Additionally as the
LA Rakers currently work on issues of identity and social justice, a social issues
propaganda studio would make sense for Westlake. Professional artists could be invited
to design alongside the youth and help them find new avenues to promote their
products. Sales at festivals across Los Angeles would become a regular part of this arts
entrepreneurship spin off, with the ultimate goal to be located at a headquarters directly
facing MacArthur or Lafayette Park as a shop and studio space that welcomes visitors to
18. Westlake 2025 | 18
buy products that support youth jobs and arts education. Additionally such a space
could become the hub of a local gallery intended to curate shows by local and youth
artists, and showcase the traditional arts and crafts from the countries that Westlake
residents immigrated from.
Garden and Health Connections:
The LA Rakers are working in conjunction with
Fallen Fruit LA to install fruit trees in MacArthur
Park and in partnerships with a local apartment
building the Asbury to create a garden for the
residents. Their work focuses on the need for
healthy outdoor space and the need for local
produce and healthy food options. Nearby in
Koreatown the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land
has partnered with the community to secure the
Francis Avenue community garden, which also
offers art and music lessons and community
programming.
As a later effort of Phase II, or during Phase III a
focus on health and local food supply should be
used to connect families to food resources and
street vendors and other local restaurants to
local gardens. It should also include an emphasis
on connecting Central American cuisines
outwards to a larger audience, and establishing a
distinct community food culture that can serve as an entry point for a larger
appreciation and understanding of local cultures. In particular this phase should find
ways to link to other community gardens, and link local street vendors and restaurants.
Partners:
• Street Vendors: Local chefs, especially Roy Choi, or Susan Feniger (founder of
Street a street food focused restaurant in Hollywood), who could give visibility
to the street foods and lend legitimacy to certain cuisines. The Small Business
Administration or other business incubation services would be helpful supports.
Partnerships with other street vendors in other cities could help connect to
other areas where street vending is legal and accepted (such as New York).
Lastly the street vendors will need to work with the Department of Public
Health to change the municipal code and health department practices.
• Arts Entrepreneurship: Partner with local artists to get started, outreach to local
printing businesses and other local workshops. Initial phases could include sales
at the Renegade Craft fair, the Unique LA craft fair and fairs in MacArthur Park.
19. Westlake 2025 | 19
• Garden and Health Connections: Los Angeles National Land Trust, Fallen Fruit
Los Angeles, local trade schools with culinary programs and other community
gardens and gardening programs, and LA Commons, the Choose Health LA
initiative.
Outcomes:
• Street Vendors: Increase legalized businesses in MacArthur Park, increase in
recognition and appreciation of Central American cuisine and encourage the
provision of healthy street foods. Increase commercial stability in and around the
park. Offer new employment opportunities for youth and adults, in interrelated
local economies.
• Arts Entrepreneurship: Provide new employment opportunities for youth and
local artists, generate income for youth participants, sell products that visually
craft a narrative for the Westlake Neighborhood and are desirable across the
city.
• Garden and Health Connections: Increase health and wellbeing of residents,
improve local food security, and create denser social connections and a sense of
community among residents who do not own their homes. Provide more
outdoors access in the community which feels safe. Generate produce that might
be used in local restaurants or homes.
Phase III: Park Futures
20. Westlake 2025 | 20
MacArthur Park is underinvested in. The infrastructure of the park is simple, with
several statues, one soccer field, one music pavilion, two play areas, picnic tables and a
lake with a path around it. Portions of the park feel unsafe to the youth who use it,
including picnic tables where gambling is set up, and gangs congregate. The LA Rakers
often spend time organizing pick-ups of the trash that accumulates across the fields.
Popular areas in the park are the playgrounds and soccer fields on the northwestern
side of the park.
In 2007 the City opened a small boathouse with paddleboats, linking back to the boats
and boathouses past that intermittently appeared on the lake starting in the 1890s and
continuing through the 1960s. By 2010 the boathouse had been closed. After 4 years the
boathouse was torn down, with program costs cited as the main factor. In comparison,
Echo park lake reopened their paddle boat program that had closed at the same time as
the MacArthur park boathouse in 2013 after a major renovation of Echo Park, including
re-lining the lake.
Meanwhile in downtown Los Angeles, The Grand Park, a new park across the street
from city hall has emerged. Managed by the Music Center, partially funded by the LA
County Board of Supervisors and partially funded by the concessions program, it
features a play fountain, several walking areas with different plant species, free yoga in
the park, regular concert programs and special events, including massive concerts. The
park schedule of events is posted and available inside the Starbucks coffee shop next to
the play fountain. In 2017 a non-profit is scheduled to take over management of the
park.
Recent investments in the park from the City Council office will create a gateway on the
southeastern corner of the park, at the intersection named Langers Square for the
historic Langers Deli. During a presentation of this improvement area, mainly including a
walkway with several lighted columns, attendees challenged the use of the funds for this
project when they saw many other needs in the park, and asked that the designs for the
columns reflect community heritage.
The opportunity exists to pursue a more aggressive park management strategy.
Coordination with groups like the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust and other
local groups could work to design a partnership with the City Department of Parks an
recreation to envision new uses for the park. Finding ways to expand programming
across the park, including the creation of concession stands around the park that could
be staffed by local businesses, including some of the current street vendors, would add
more eyes on the park and more investment in the overall maintenance of the park.
Promotion of the existing park programming and sports could easily be achieved
through park calendars and message boards in multiple languages. An expansion of
youth sports areas, and especially the creation of water play areas like those in Grand
Park, with good visibility and lighting would help welcome residents to the park and
increase a sense of safety.
21. Westlake 2025 | 21
Given some areas of the park are
underutilized and some areas of the
parks are crowded, its clear that
there are portions that have nothing
which attracts the majority of people.
Fallen Fruit Los Angeles worked with
the LA Rakers to install citrus trees
along one side of the lake. Currently
the trees are receiving supplemental
watering from the Rakers because
they cannot get the park management
to ensure the trees get enough
water. In this area, portions of the
grass areas might be replaced with
beds of sturdy herbs and fruit trees
to make a food garden that can
handle high traffic, and management
of the water systems might be
handed over to a group that can be
trusted to ensure the plants will
thrive. The skill sets generated under
Phase II’s garden program would be
able to support the park better and
empower youth gardeners to
maintain the park’s vegetation. Tearing up more of the underutilized grassy areas could
also be an opportunity to replace portions of the park with drought tolerant planted
areas and walking paths. Use of permeable pavement could also create a catchment
system to feed the lake.
Instead of enshrining the current shape of the park, and letting it decay, this Phase III
envisions a process for activating corners of the park, in collaboration with youth users.
Surveying current users about the facilities they’d like to see could result in an entirely
different MacArthur Park.
Partners: Work with the City Council office, land trusts, City Parks Department and
any organizations that support youth outdoor activities, or health initiatives. Partner
with Fallen Fruit and other community gardens to expand the fruit tree plantings.
Outcomes: Change the sense of investment in the park. Ensure that youth users
benefit from a cleaner, safer park and generate income that supports other
programming in the park. Create positive changes that increase agency in the
community. Employee youth as park caretakers, provide opportunities for new business
in the park, and new sports opportunities in addition to soccer. Reduce water use for
grassy areas of the park that aren’t currently being used, improve the picnic areas.
22. Westlake 2025 | 22
CONCLUSIONS:
Many of the children and youth within Westlake are living at or below poverty levels.
Studies conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts have found that at-risk
children in particular benefit from intensive arts experiences in three primary ways:
• Disadvantaged children with high arts engagement have overall better outcomes
(academically, civically) than those that do not.
• Disadvantaged children with high arts engagement show achievement levels
comparative with, or better than the general population
• All children, including at-risk children, show higher levels of civic and social
engagement with exposure to the arts.24
Many of the residents of Westlake are facing interrelated challenges caused or
exacerbated by poverty and undocumented status within their families. Isolation in the
community from the legal economy places residents in positions of vulnerability.
Additionally as the families of Westlake are nearly all renters, they are more vulnerable
to displacement than communities of homeowners. Creating a sense of ownership for
the common spaces in Westlake, supporting anchoring cultural businesses and
encouraging youth to take a lead in creating the neighborhood vision is an alternate path
to community ownership that will prepare the community to face upcoming changes.
This plan is designed to achieve multiple outcomes that will improve quality of life for
the residents, as covered under Phases I-III. However the core of this plan is a
framework that creates a self-determined and positive narrative for the community,
23. Westlake 2025 | 23
crafted by the community, in order to step out ahead of any attempts to impose changes
on the community in the interests of “revitalization”. It is impossible to hold back
change, as change is a constant, but it is possible to shape change. Until Westlake is seen
as a community with agency, and unless community leaders can emerge with enough
strength and unity to challenge politics
and the cycles of development, various
City agencies will dictate the directions
that the change must take. If these
policy makers cannot be made to see
the narrative of Westlake, their ideas
may fail to serve those who live there.
There are already indications that these
ideas will conflict with the residents,
from raids on street vendors to funding
for luxury apartments, to calls for
returning to a larger lake at Westlake,
one that would drown the soccer fields.
This plan is created to argue for a
different and more creative path, one
that would take more intensive social
investment, but lower financial
investment. A plan that would prioritize
the uses current to the community,
especially the uses that are existing
within MacArthur and Lafayette Parks,
and build on them. It rejects the idea
that the direction forward is in trying to
go backwards to recreate the aura of
the 1920s (and income levels). At the
heart of this plan, at the Heart of Los
Angeles, are the youth of Westlake.
Future civic leaders and artists, future
business owners and parents, this plan
will give them tools to create and
recreate Westlake again and again.
24. Westlake 2025 | 24
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