California Plaza

Organizers have abandoned efforts to construct a $25-million Dance Gallery facility in the California Plaza redevelopment project downtown after a parting of the ways between the institutions that had planned to share the performing, rehearsal and training space at 4th and Olive streets. Leaders of the Dance Gallery organization announced Friday that they will not proceed with plans to build the center, which was to have been used by their group and the R.D. Colburn School of Performing Arts.

In a cultural marriage of convenience, representatives of the long-delayed, underfinanced Dance Gallery have agreed in principle with the R. D. Colburn School of the Performing Arts to share a proposed $25-million facility in the California Plaza redevelopment project downtown.

Herman Guttman, 73, an architect and former managing partner of Gruen Associates, who designed the nation's first two-level enclosed mall in Minneapolis and was one of the designers of California Plaza in the Bunker Hill Redevelopment Area in Los Angeles. His involvement in California Plaza was in the project's first phase and included the 42-story, 1-million-square-foot One California Plaza office building and adjacent Museum of Contemporary Art.

Barry Siegel's excellent article ("Dilemmas of Settling in Secret," April 5) raised the vitally important question about the practice of "sealing" court records as a condition of settling lawsuits. Secrecy agreements--the sealing of court records to protect the information contained within--have become more commonplace over the last few years as defendants in civil lawsuits demand that files be closed to the public to prevent public exposure.

The Times' brief article ("Stairway Linking Old and New L.A. Opens," Metro, Oct. 5) underscores our need to have an architecture and urban design critic as a regular member of your editorial staff. The article fails to put the steps in context. Readers should have been informed about the range of existing cultural, recreational and business destinations that are now accessible to pedestrians. Readers might have been given a diagram showing the immediate linkages to Arco Plaza and other Figueroa destinations and the thousands of employees who might now visit Museum of Contemporary Art at lunchtime, or vice versa, the thousands of employees on Bunker Hill who will be able to use the Central Library with ease, or go to an extraordinarily re-created Pershing Square; or the hundreds of thousands of us who will arrive and leave from a Metro Rail station on the east side of Pershing Square and have access to urban pathways and open space not yet in place, but about to be realized.

From the distant vantage point of the Harbor and Santa Monica freeways, downtown Los Angeles is beginning to look more and more interesting. The recently topped crown of the cylindrical First Interstate World Center, fashioned by the architectural office of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, glistens, as do the wall panels being applied to the 777 Tower designed by Cesar Pelli.

The California Plaza Spiral Court, now being pressed into service as an outdoor amphitheater for concerts sponsored by the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, makes a delightful venue for alfresco summertime art-and-entertainment. Saturday, a near-capacity crowd sprawled on the steps and lingered at nearby cafe tables to take in two locally based ensembles: Kinnara Taiko traditional Japanese drummers and Jazz Dancers Inc.

For as many years as I can remember, I've looked forward to the Sunday Times Real Estate Section, always expecting to read about the major players in Southern California's dynamic real estate marketplace and about the trends being established by builders and developers in the area. I even look forward to Sam Hall Kaplan's commentary on the above, although I seldom agree with him. The front page always managed to generate excitement with news and photographs of the latest grandiose monument downtown or perhaps a new planned community in Riverside County.