Push for First Street North Continues

In the past month, the drive to develop the Little Tokyo Recreation Center suffered yet another set-back as City Councilperson Rita Walters continued her efforts to exclude the project from the First Street North Block before the end of her term. On June 8, 2001, Councilwoman Walters introduced a motion that would permanently move the Children’s Museum from the corner of Temple and Alameda Streets to the corner of Temple and Judge John Aiso Streets, the location which had been sought for the Little Tokyo Recreation Center.

The Site in Question

First Street North block, which is bound by Temple, Alameda, First and Judge John Aiso Streets, once served as the heart of Little Tokyo with its shops, boarding houses, meeting rooms and churches. Though now home to the Little Tokyo Historic District, Japanese American National Museum, 100^th/442^nd/MIS Go For Broke Memorial and the Union Center for the Arts, the block is covered mainly with City parking lots and remains the last piece of city-owned property large enough to accommodate the Little Tokyo Recreation Center. The motion, as introduced at the City Council hearing on June 8^th, would make it extremely difficult to fit the Rec Center on the block. To make matters worse, the motion was pushed through without any public hearings, the community was not notified, nor were their opinions requested on the motion.

Rec Center Supporters State Their Concerns

Members of the Little Tokyo Recreation Center spoke out at the June 8th City Council hearing, raising concerns over the lack of public input in the decision-making process and denial of space for the Rec Center. "We have always supported the Children’s Museum on First Street North. We’re just concerned that once again we’ve been excluded from the process, and may be left with no options on First Street North," said Rev. Mark Nakagawa of Centenary United Methodist Church, and Rec Center board member.

Amy Phillips, who helped organize the recent "Spectrum" Nikkei youth conference in Little Tokyo, held up a colorful panel of the Rec Center’s Handprint Petition, "There are over 1,200 handprints and names of supporters of the Rec Center, ranging from six months to 87 years old, with names from Yoshida and Chen to Villanueva and Robinson ."

The eleven City Councilmembers present granted the Rec Center supporters 30 days to meet with the Children’s Museum and the CLA’s office to work out a satisfactory plan. The groups were directed to return to Council on Tuesday, July 10 for a final decision.

The Long Quest for a Recreation Center in Little Tokyo

The difficulties finding a site for the Rec Center are not new. A gym first appeared in plans for the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in 1970. When completed in 1980, however, the gym was not included. In 1994, the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) hosted a series of charettes to discuss ways to revitalize Little Tokyo. Most groups presented elaborate plans and professional drawings. The group with high school and college students, however, simply held up a drawing on notebook paper. What did they think would recreate Little Tokyo as a destination point? It was a gym.

Thus, the idea of a gym in Little Tokyo was reborn. At a subsequent Little Tokyo Community Development Advisory Committee (an advisory group for the CRA with no fiscal authority), members voted to redirect $1million in CRA money to build a temporary gymnasium on First Street North, directly behind the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). Representatives from basketball and volleyball leagues, martial arts organizations and the Little Tokyo community formed the Little Tokyo Community Gymnasium Committee in 1995 to research temporary gymnasiums, such as those used in Northridge following the 1994 earthquake. Plans were drawn up, and program and budget scenarios devised. Ultimately all development on First Street North stalled due to a conflict between the City and the First Street North Office Tower Project Developers (an unrelated project on the same block).

While waiting for the City to resolve the First Street North development issues, the Community Gym Committee was busy forming the Little Tokyo Community Gymnasium, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to the developing the project in Little Tokyo. Once the City canceled plans for the First Street North Office Tower Project, the Little Tokyo Community Gymnasium spearheaded an 18-month effort to plan the site. Representatives from community groups, including the Gym, Geffen Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and Japanese American National Museum (JANM) met monthly to plan First Street North. Plans included the gym, a museum pad, and the Veterans Memorial. Unfortunately, Councilperson Rita Walters did not support the plan, recommending that the Little Tokyo Community Gymnasium begin looking elsewhere.

Eventually twenty-five sites in Little Tokyo were explored. The group made offers on several, but none worked out. As time went on, other groups asked that the gym to include space for activities such as a senior nutrition program, theater and art workshops, community meetings, youth mentoring programs and more. The project had become more than a gym — it was now a multi-purpose, multi-generational facility with the potential to be open every day of the week for 14 hours a day . To show the breadth of activities, the project was renamed the Little Tokyo Recreation Center.

In the spring of 2000, a committee headed by MOCA and JANM started meeting again to plan a new development for First Street North. Renamed the Central Avenue Art Park, the site was planned to include an art park atop an underground parking garage. Supporters of the Little Tokyo Recreation Center fought to establish guidelines that would include a broader ranger of community interests in the Art Park planning process. Consensus was finally reached in August 2000 to restructure the body to include the two museums, the Children’s Museum, community groups, local business owners and residents. Unfortunately, this coincided with the realization by the City that the high water table at First Street North would make it too expensive to build subterranean parking. Only plans to build the Children’s Museum proceeded as scheduled. A groundbreaking ceremony was held at the corner of Temple and Alameda in March 2001, making the recent motion to move the Children’s Museum site even more unexpected.

What will happen to the Rec Center? What will happen to First Street North? As Dean Toji, president of the LTSC CDC board, stated at the City Council Hearings, "First Street North is the historic center of Little Tokyo. Rooming houses, community meeting rooms and churches were located there until the WWII internment forced Japanese Americans out of Little Tokyo and into the camps. Now we are asking that Little Tokyo doesn’t lose this historically significant block. With the Rec Center on First Street North, that won’t happen."