Los Angeles plans for aerial tram to pass 40 feet over Chinatown homes.. all day long on game day
Never could the sisters have imagined a project proposed directly above their home.
Metro is helping to plan an aerial gondola system to whisk baseball fans and concertgoers from Union Station to Dodger Stadium in what it says would be a mere seven-minute trip. Funded by former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, the project would run about 40 feet above the Lings’ century-old Victorian cottage — meaning that every 30 seconds on game days, some 40 people packed in a tram would pass outside their living room window.
“It’s just another way that we can’t own our neighborhood and feel safe and quiet here because literally you have something flying over your house all day long, forever, I guess,” said Tany Ling, a singer who offers private lessons at the home she and her sister bought in 2012.
McCourt entities are buying up properties in the neighborhood, but the Lings don’t want to move. They started StopTheGondola.org to fight the project.
---------
The proposal, first floated in 2018, has spurred anxieties in Chinatown, where the median income is $36,000 and some fear it will accelerate the gentrification that is causing the slow exodus of Asian residents, many of whom have lived there for generations. The cable towers — about the size of a 14-story building — would go up aside new high-rises that are in the works, further changing the character of a historic ethnic enclave that has become a foodie and art hot spot.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-23/group-seeks-to-halt-dodger-gondola-calling-it-a-sweetheart-deal
Metro’s Dodger Stadium gondola deal is challenged by nonprofit
The California Endowment did not learn of the project until last September and only after the organization and other groups sought records regarding the project, the petition states. ARTT submitted the project to Metro as an unsolicited proposal in April 2018 and declared it a privately funded public transportation project, the petition states.
“The gondola project therefore appears to have all the earmarks of a clandestine, sweetheart deal, carefully sidestepping the significant public engagement, outreach and transparency required of all Metro public transportation projects while simultaneously avoiding the scrutiny and competitive bidding required of private projects,” the petition states.
The petition further alleges that Metro fast-tracked and “sole-sourced” the project through its Office of Extraordinary Innovation, thereby depriving the public of the appropriate knowledge and input.
https://www.dailynews.com/2022/03/23/metros-dodger-stadium-gondola-deal-is-challenged-by-nonprofit/