Central Avenue Art Park

Venice's Piazza San Marco. Moscow's Red Square. Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The urban plaza is where civic life is played out, where the chaotic energy of the city spills over into the open. Soon Los Angeles--a city famously devoid of communal space--may get its own, more humble, version. Later this month, a model of the Central Avenue Art Park--a $2.5-million-plus plan to convert the interior of the block bordered by 1st and Temple streets in Little Tokyo into a vast 11.

Yielding to pressure from supporters of a proposed community gymnasium in Little Tokyo, the decision-making body for the Central Avenue Art Park project has broadened its membership to better reflect the community, including neighborhood residents. Under the revised scheme, Little Tokyo residents, businesses, and property owners each get a vote on the executive committee, which has been expanded from nine to 19 members.

Yielding to pressure from supporters of a proposed community gymnasium in Little Tokyo, the decision-making body for the Central Avenue Art Park project has broadened its membership to better reflect the community, including neighborhood residents. Under the revised scheme, Little Tokyo residents, businesses, and property owners each get a vote on the executive committee, which has been expanded from nine to 19 members.

Venice's Piazza San Marco. Moscow's Red Square. Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The urban plaza is where civic life is played out, where the chaotic energy of the city spills over into the open. Soon Los Angeles--a city famously devoid of communal space--may get its own, more humble, version. Later this month, a model of the Central Avenue Art Park--a $2.5-million-plus plan to convert the interior of the block bordered by 1st and Temple streets in Little Tokyo into a vast 11.

Shaken by the city's decision to let the Children's Museum build its new downtown campus in Little Tokyo, backers of a community gymnasium are urging city and museum officials to approve a new site for their project. Having a gym in Little Tokyo for basketball, volleyball, martial arts and other community activities has been a dream of Japanese Americans in Southern California for a quarter century.

Proponents of a Little Tokyo recreation center embroiled in an exhausting eight-year struggle hope their latest proposal for a gym gets buried--literally. In a tug of war that has split a community accustomed to consensus, an unusual proposal to construct the entire recreation center underground with the 3.5-acre Central Avenue Art Park project on top could prove the best compromise for the multiple parties involved.