Opponents of a unique project that would take baseball fans to and from Dodger Stadium via a skyway gondola above Chinatown, Elysian Park and the birthplace of Los Angeles took aim at Sacramento lawmakers on Monday, Aug. 18 for a bill that would expedite the project’s judicial review.
Members of the Los Angeles City Council joined with Northeast L.A. residents, including opposition leaders from the Stop The Gondola group and the local Sierra Club, in asking the state Legislature to remove amendments to Senate Bill 71 that they said were added at the behest of Frank McCourt, the former owner of the LA Dodgers and lead project developer who owns a large portion of the stadium parking lots.
During a rally at the entrance to the L.A. State Historic Park adjacent to Chinatown — where a gondola boarding station would be built — Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez appealed to lawmakers in a new round of opposition to a project she and others call a blight on the area, its residents and totally unnecessary.
“Please, regional representatives that are up there, hear us, see us. We are asking you to remove this (amendment) so our communities are not devastated in order to benefit a billionaire,” Hernandez said to an audience of about 150 gondola opponents.
After learning about the amendments to a bill by state Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco, the L.A. City Council voted unanimously to oppose the bill. The action was signed by Mayor Karen Bass.
On Monday, opponents put pressure on the Legislature to remove the amendments or kill the bill that they say will give the project a favorable boost. The project’s environmental status took a hit in May when an appellate court ruled in favor of opponents, requiring additional environmental reviews before the project can go forward.
Jon Christensen, founder of the L.A. Parks Alliance, the plaintiff in that case and a group that has strongly opposed the project on grounds it will damage historic parts of LA, add blight and traffic to neighborhoods, and intrude on the solitude and aesthetics of the L.A. State Historic Park, led Monday’s rally at the park’s southern entrance.
Regarding the bill, Christensen said Section 3 was written to exclusively benefit McCourt’s project. “It is an attempt to speed things up and then an attempt to go around local authority,” he said on Monday.
The Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit (LAART) project was submitted to LA Metro by L.A. Dodgers’ former owner Frank McCourt in April 2018. It received LA Metro approvals on Feb. 22, 2024. McCourt owns 50% of the parking lots at Dodger Stadium which court records show he may use for a future mixed-use development, including residential and retail uses; opponents say the gondola is simply a private project that will get people to and from shopping centers and housing in Chavez Ravine.
Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies (ARTT), a limited partnership that McCourt formed, was bankrolling the environmental review and preliminary design process. Last year, McCourt Global gifted the project to a new entity, Zero Emissions Transit. ZET is the nonprofit owner responsible for building, financing and operating the gondola project.
Nathan Click, spokesperson for ZET, said on Monday afternoon the bill and its amendments in essence means the project would be given an expedited judicial review that must be completed within 365 days, faster than a time of two to three years as has sometimes been the case in CEQA reviews. Click said it is just one provision of the larger bill that extends current law regarding judicial reviews of environmental planning documents for zero emission transit projects that includes the ZET gondola project.
“It doesn’t add any new exemptions,” Click added.
It should not affect the earlier appellate court ruling, which required LA Metro to throw out the Environmental Impact Report and do more assessments on how people living in nearby apartments and homes will be affected by construction noise and dust.
The court also said LA Metro failed to consult with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which has jurisdiction over natural and historical resources in the gondola footprint, including: the Los Angeles State Historic Park and El Pueblo de Los Ángeles, the birthplace of L.A. The court ordered Metro to meet with the conservancy.
As a result, LA Metro must gather input from the conservancy and also prepare a supplement to its original EIR by including more public feedback, as well as noise reduction techniques that protect residents in Chinatown, Elysian Park and El Pueblo. This adds another leg of an already lengthy review process. The transit agency would have to re-approve both the new EIR documents and the project itself.
If the bill is signed into law as is, Hernandez, Christensen and L.A. City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado want Section 3 taken out of the bill, calling it favoritism to a wealthy developer, not a reform to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Click disagrees with that characterization, saying the amendments apply to all zero-emission transit projects.
Speakers in the rally also were deeply concerned about construction of a gondola station inside the park and the cables carrying gondola cars hanging 26 feet above the ground affecting the park-goers experience. They walked a rope from the entrance through the southwestern edge of the park, passing trees they marked with R.I.P. signs.
The Sierra Club said 81 trees will be removed from this section of the park to make way for the gondola. In total, the project would remove 304 trees, the group said.
On the rope line was Shirley Moyers, resident of Echo Park. She is a Dodger fan but said she still opposes building what is billed as an easier, zero-emission, seven-minute ride to Dodger Stadium.
“All these trees lost makes me so angry,” she said, while holding the rope line under a shade tree marked for removal. “People use this park all the time, sometimes just for walking. It is the only place I know that has a gorgeous view of the downtown LA skyline.”
Lettie Ibarra, who was sitting on a shady bench inside the park, lives in Mount Washington and is a regular park visitor. She’s opposed to building a gondola, with a station inside the park and cables with dangling gondola cars above.
“Look at all these trees, how beautiful it is. This monstrosity they are looking to build will take away from this and it makes no sense,” she said.
The environmental community is split on the project. While the Sierra Club opposes it, the Coalition For Clean Air would like to see it built. In a letter last year, the group wrote: “The Environmental Impact Report found that on game days the gondola will remove up to 3,000 automobile trips, which will reduce air pollution and protect public health.”
Click said the opponents are exaggerating the impact to the park.
“The route hugs the southwest edge of the park, largely flying over a utility access road – it does not ‘cut across the heart of the park’ as the opponents claim. The project would affect less than 0.2 percent of the park’s physical footprint, and it leaves well-over 99 percent of park land untouched and available for the same community use,” wrote Click in a response.
He wrote that the project will reduce traffic, decrease pollution and and connect neighborhoods. “That’s why the vast majority of Angelenos support the project, alongside a broad coalition of transportation safety advocates, clean air groups, and community organizations from the immediate surrounding neighborhoods.”
Amanda Stamen, Sierra Club Central Angeles Chapter’s planning chairperson representing 30,000 members, said the city and LA Metro need to find more green space, not less.
Instead, she supports an expanded Dodger Stadium Express shuttle bus system that currently takes thousands of fans from Union Station and the South Bay to the parking lots atop Chavez Ravine, and back after the game. She wants to see it expanded, and using only electric buses.