Nancy Popp

Untitled (Climbing Performance)

LA Plaza Village Development, Broadway St. and Cesar Chavez Ave.

September 16th, 2018

October 21st, 2018 - January 6th, 2019

"The LA Plaza Village Development/LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes Foundation are special projects of former LA County Supervisor Gloria Molina; the site on which LA Plaza Village is being built is part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument, a city department describing itself as “a living museum” that “preserves the culturally diverse heritage” of Los Angeles. These former parking lots are being subleased to developer Trammell Crow for about half of the revenue brought in by their previous usage; the revenue will be used as a foundational operational budget for LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, which has struggled to attract audiences and funding since its 2011 opening.

The mixed-use retail-residential complex is intended to transform the neighborhood, and not for those who have lived in the area for decades. The rent for the 20% of units deemed ‘affordable housing’ will not be based on the true Adjusted Median Income of approximately $24,400 but on Los Angeles’ city-wide AMI of over $54,000. Similar in scope and scale to other downtown developments such as One Santa Fe, LA Plaza Village is a node where numerous issues of public funding, land use, community and housing needs, hyper-development and urban planning intersect and give rise to questions such as:

Whom does this private project actually serve, and who will benefit from it?
What are the true needs of the long-term community surrounding this project, including the houseless?
How could other needs for and uses of this land, including true public, non-commercialized green spaces, been considered and addressed?"

- Nancy Popp, September 2018