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Posted Dec 29, 2012, 10:00 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 6,718
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^ you make a very good argument for the selection of SOM, or why, if they were a compromise, no other choice was as reasonable or realistic.
I'm disappointed more than I'd otherwise be cuz the proj was delayed for so long. if plans for the courthouse had stuck to the original time schedule, then my patience wouldn't have been tested & my expectations wouldn't have been raised that much higher. but what's done is done, & now the only other  will be if the date of groundbreaking is, once again, pushed forward, as it has been for over 5 yrs.
meanwhile, across the street.....
Quote:
Grand Park holds grand potential for Music Center
The organization behind the place known as the Music Center could really make a name for itself with successful programming at the recreation area.
Diavolo Dance Theater dancers perform at the 1960s-era Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain at Grand Park
in Los Angeles. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
By Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times
December 29, 2012
"There's no there there" is how Gertrude Stein famously summed up and put down Oakland, her old hometown. For the Music Center, which manages much of the prime cultural real estate in downtown Los Angeles, the problem has long been the opposite: There's too much "there" there. To the public, by and large, the glamorous hilltop place known as the Music Center overshadows the identically named but ill-defined organization that's been in charge of venue logistics since it opened as the city's performing arts hub 48 years ago.
The glory at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Mark Taper Forum, the Ahmanson Theatre and REDCAT accrues mainly to the impresarios who put on the shows. The Music Center generally plays impresario only for a dance series of about two dozen performances each season. It also orchestrates a $3.9-million-a-year youth arts education program that's vital but less high-profile.
For the most part, the Music Center plays landlord. After the applause dies down, it provides the ushers and security staff for a safe and orderly exit, then sends in the cleanup crew. But now its shot at greater acclaim is at hand. In May, the county Board of Supervisors put the Music Center in charge of running the new Grand Park, which stretches downhill for four city blocks from the Music Center's own doorstep to City Hall's.
If the 12-acre park teems with cultural attractions and other forms of fun, chances are that it will redound to the Music Center's glory. What's more, civic leaders hope success at the park will kick-start efforts to spruce up the Music Center itself and further improve the whole cultural hub.
Two recent...hires will help determine how things go in Grand Park. Lucas Rivera, the park director in charge of daily operations, is a veteran arts manager from Philadelphia, and Thor Steingraber, the Music Center's vice president in charge of programming, will orchestrate park events while also trying to come up with innovative uses for the Music Center's traditional venues. To introduce the park, Steingraber said, everything will be free through June. Ticketed events will come after that, but he says they will be the exception rather than the rule.
From late July through November, Grand Park hosted about 40 events. Some were bids for a mass audience, such as a Dia de los Muertos celebration that drew a crowd estimated at more than 4,000 people, while others aimed to grab passers-by. On Jan. 20, Grand Park will continue a "Park Your Politics" series that began on Election Day with video screens carrying news coverage of the returns. People who want the buzz of being part of a crowd for Barack Obama's second inauguration will be able to find it in front of a huge screen on the upper quadrant of Grand Park.
Over the summer, members of the Music Center's board donated $500,000 to create a fund for new programming initiatives that includes the park; this month, the San Francisco-based James Irvine Foundation granted the Music Center $500,000 over three years for Grand Park programs. Chairing the Music Center's board is Kent Kresa, a former longtime Northrop Grumman Corp. chief. Fundraising "is just in its formative stages," he says, but he's hopeful. "People are excited to get in on the ground floor of a new program that reaches a diverse audience."
Considered from the supervisors' suite in the Hall of Administration that borders it, Grand Park turns into a cog in a larger strategy that could bring more splendor to a growing downtown. "Part of why I'm excited and hopeful … is that it's potentially catalytic," says Chairman Mark Ridley-Thomas. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, long the board's most vocal arts advocate, lays out a vision in which a booming cultural park could be an extremely valuable political chip.
The stakes include two major improvements: $300 million for a long-deferred renovation and backstage expansion of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and a reconfiguration of the Music Center's plaza that was drawn up in 2001 and left undone, and the potentially transformative leveling of two government buildings — the Hall of Administration and the Stanley Mosk Courthouse. Moving their functions elsewhere would clear the way for an expanded Grand Park, with an eye-pleasing view of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels to the north.
It probably won't be possible, Yaroslavsky says, without a change in state law to allow cultural bond issues to pass with 55% of the vote rather than the currently prohibitive two-thirds requirement. Success would also depend, he says, on high-rolling philanthropists stepping up to cover half the cost of the Music Center improvements.
Ridley-Thomas says he'll soon call for formal planning, focused on whether and how to proceed. Yaroslavsky, who'll leave the board after 2014 because of term limits, says one of his priorities for his last years in office is to get the Music Center renovations and Civic Center transformation "out of the starter's gate."
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