The showpiece of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's vision for a clean technology manufacturing corridor east of downtown isn't much to look at. The scraggly 20-acre plot, dotted with weeds and pipes venting deep soil gases, was once envisioned as the site of a state prison.
But the mayor and his team are marketing this industrial parcel, dubbed the CleanTech Manufacturing Center, as a business incubator in the mold of Silicon Valley.
Amid 12% unemployment and a city budget crisis, the corridor concept was one of the few bright spots in Villaraigosa's recent State of the City address.
Though it would rely heavily on private investment and money from state and federal sources, it is a critical component of the mayor's "green jobs" agenda as he eyes a probable run for governor in 2010. And it could be a test of his pledge to transform Los Angeles into "the greenest and cleanest big city in the nation," drawing more than a third of its electrical power from renewable sources by 2020.
Outlining his agenda earlier this month, the mayor set the bar high, saying the plan could make Los Angeles "the global capital of clean technology."
Cecilia V. Estolano, chief executive of the Community Redevelopment Agency, has led development of the CleanTech Corridor concept. She contends that Los Angeles is "driving the technology, and we're driving demand, and that is a huge calling card."
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The corridor envisioned by city planners spans 2,236 acres east of Alameda Street, with its borders still in flux. It begins at a swath of land straddling the L.A. River, near Los Angeles State Historic Park (the former Cornfield), that Councilman Ed Reyes hopes to transform into a neighborhood where bicycles and pedestrians would rule and carbon emissions would be cut by 35%. Then it runs south through the site of a future Department of Water and Power research center into the Artists-in-Residence district, which stretches from Alameda to the river and from 1st Street to south of 7th Street.
The vacant CleanTech Manufacturing site at Santa Fe Avenue and 15th Street, just south of the 10 Freeway, forms the corridor's southern anchor.
The jockeying for a piece of a project at the top of the mayor's agenda has already begun.
Last fall, CRA officials and the mayor's business team began courting clean technology companies -- talking up the purchasing power of the city's public utilities, as well as the array of tax incentives available to business.
