Los Angeles Development And Redevelopment

It looks like something more likely to be seen at Cape Canaveral than on a hilltop next to the downtown business district. No wonder the 1,100-foot-tall, rocket engine-shaped "monument" to Los Angeles that a Culver City artist and a West Los Angeles developer want to build was launching so much debate Thursday. The proposed spiral tower would be topped with a bronze sculpture of a sword-waving angel that would be twice the size of the Statue of Liberty.

Gorky's Cafe and Russian Brewery--the 24-hour-a-day bohemian hangout that helped bring life to the deserted streets of downtown Los Angeles--is on the verge of becoming the next casualty of the central city's stalled revival. Fred Powers, who bought the 10-year-old cafeteria on 8th Street at the edge of Skid Row in 1985, says the promise of "Foodski, Funski, Brewski" is no longer luring crowds to the eclectic eatery and he will pull the plug if business does not improve by next month.

With the surprise announcement Sunday that the two pastors at the Echo Park temple started by revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson have resigned, a bitter fight to save the building's historic interior appears to be over. Pastors Ed and Ivy Stanton are leaving after two years marked by bitter squabbles over the future of Angelus Temple, a building with national historic landmark status that serves as the headquarters for the International Foursquare Gospel denomination.

A thousand architects from dozens of countries presented designs at Italy's Venice Biennale last fall, but the pavilion that kept crowds milling around until the last moment of the last day was the American, with half its space devoted to studies of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry. The Los Angeles architect's models, some covered with furling pieces of white construction paper held together with Scotch tape, looked like a tall ship under full sail.

The Alexandria Hotel, once a showplace where guests included U.S. Presidents and Hollywood celebrities, has degenerated into the worst drug trafficking spot in the Central City, the Los Angeles city attorney charged Monday . Unless the hotel's owners immediately eradicate what was described as a major cocaine sales and distribution center, City Atty. James K. Hahn said he will move to shut its doors.

Architects and urban planners are as divided as everyone else about how development should best shape the future of Los Angeles. Two of the leading players in the dialogue are architects Stefanos Polyzoides, a proponent of the New Urbanism school of making a city more livable, and Margaret Crawford, who is skeptical about that approach. They spoke last week on the radio program "Which Way L.A?" on KCRW-FM, from which these excerpts are taken. Warren Olney is host of the program.

In the most ambitious project of its kind in city history, Los Angeles parks officials proposed Wednesday a $25-million transformation of the Hansen Dam Recreation Area into a major sports and recreation facility for the region. The plan calls for using 100 acres in Lake View Terrace to build sports fields, an indoor soccer arena, roller hockey rink, bike motocross course, skateboard park, model airplane airport and a recreational vehicle campground.

Daniel P. Garcia, former president of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission, was explaining why he became a land development lawyer-lobbyist--one of the most successful at City Hall. "When I had my heart attack or whatever it was, I was in the hospital," he said. "It occurred to me that leading the two lives of doing litigation on the one hand and running the Planning Commission was too much. "It had taken too big a personal toll.

The discovery of the Pacific Palisades oil field was one of many finds in the last 96 years that have made the Los Angeles Basin a great urban oil storehouse, with valuable reservoirs from East Los Angeles to beyond the beach in Santa Monica Bay. Occidental Petroleum Corp. has struggled unsuccessfully to develop the Palisades field since its geologists found oil-bearing sand in 1966 at 9,271 feet beneath Elder Street and Entrada Drive in the expensive residential neighborhood.

The planned $250-million Sunset Millennium mixed-use development in West Hollywood moved closer to reality this week with the builder's purchase of the high-profile site on the Sunset Strip. Developer Mark Siffin said he will file the project's formal development application within days and begin the approval process for the two-block project along the south side of Sunset Boulevard west of La Cienega Boulevard.