WHY NOT JUST CALL IT THE FRANK GEHRY RIVER?

You may have thought the LA River belonged to the people of LA.  Not so.  It's becoming increasingly clear that the LA River belongs to a group of powerful insiders who have their own vision for the River, and they have no interest in hearing what the public wants.

Take the recently announced Headwaters Pavillion planned for Canoga Park, designed by Frank Gehry and the landscape architecture firm Olin, the same team that spearheaded the creation of the LA River Master Plan recently adopted by the LA County Board of Supervisors.

The Master Plan was adopted over the objections of Friends of the Los Angeles River, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, Heal the Bay, the Nature Conservancy, LA Waterkeeper and the Center for Biological Diversity.  The last two groups filed a lawsuit to stop the Master Plan in July.  Among their objections was that the Master Plan reinforces the view that the LA River is primarily a flood control channel, and that it doesn't prioritize habitat restoration and climate resilience.  These groups also complained that their views, and the views of the communities that border the River, were largely ignored during the process of creating that Master Plan.

So do these groups have a legitimate complaint?  Or are they just a bunch of obstructionist whiners who are angry they didn't get their way?

A quick look at the history of the LA River Master Plan shows that the insiders who have been driving the process were never interested in meaningful input from the public.  Back in 2015 LA Mayor Eric Garcetti and the LA River Revitalization Corp. made the surprise announcement that Gehry's firm had been chosen to create a master plan for the River.  The choice had been made behind closed doors, with no effort made to seek input from stakeholders, including Friends of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR), a non-profit that had already been working for decades to revitalize the River.  FoLAR and other groups were later invited to participate in meetings as part of the planning process, but, as stated above, they believe their input was largely ignored.

This kind of thing is standard operating procedure for Garcetti, who has shown over and over again that he feels no need to listen to LA's communities.  As a city councilmember, Garcetti was an enthusiastic cheerleader for the Millennium Hollywood, in spite of widespread community opposition and warnings that it was unwise to build skyscrapers next to the Hollywood Fault.  He stepped in to rescue the troubled Sea Breeze Project, overriding the objections of the local community and his own appointees on the City Planning Commission.  (The developer behind Sea Breeze recently pled guilty to money laundering, having covertly funnelled money to a number of LA politicians, including a group that supported Garcetti.)   When he finally realized how bad LA's homeless crisis was making him look, Garcetti quickly slapped together his A Bridge Home proposal, which was presented with much fanfare.  This badly conceived and inadequately funded program quickly slid into the background, its lack of success seemingly the result of a woeful lack of planning.  When members of a Koreatown community group tried to participate in what had been advertised as a public meeting about A Bridge Home, they were told that their names were on a list of people who were barred from attending. 

This is clearly the way Garcetti prefers to work, making decisions behind closed doors, consulting only with the power brokers who have backed him up for years.  Garcetti and his cadre chose Frank Gehry to guide the creation of the LA River Master Plan.  Garcetti and his cadre pushed for approval of the Plan, in spite of loud objections from the stakeholders who would actually have to live with the results.  The fact that Gehry has been chosen, again, to create a pavilion intended to mark the LA River’s headwaters in Canoga Park should come as no surprise.  He’s already been anointed by the insiders who have controlled the process all along. 

So remember: The LA River doesn't belong to us.  It belongs to Eric Garcetti and the power brokers who surround him.  And they've decided to turn it over to Frank Gehry and his team. 

It makes no sense to keep calling it the LA River, since it clearly doesn’t belong to the people of LA.  Let's just rename it after the man who has been entrusted with the task of planning for the River's future, no matter what the consequences are for the rest of us. 

Let's just call it the Frank Gehry River.  We know he'd be happy with the change.