09/27/04

LC040927

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It's a local landmark that fell on hard times, but it may be the
linchpin to resurrecting a community.

Rosalie Gurrola>> I'm glad the structure is still here for the
historical reasons. I respect history of communities and
landmarks, but at this particular moment in time, I look forward
to what could be.

Val>> And then, is California melting? Some researchers
predict global warming will raise temperatures by ten degrees.
Can we do anything to stop it?

All that and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Historic buildings are getting a whole new lease on life.
Developers are taking warehouses, factories and offices and
turning them into apartments, condos and lofts. It's happening
all over downtown Los Angeles, but it's also happening in
communities like Boyle Heights where the Sears Tower is being
given a whole new life. Toni Guinyard tells us it's called
"adaptive re-use".

Toni Guinyard>> From the inside, the Boyle Heights Sears store
is showing its age and the years have not been kind. Most of
the one-time distribution center stands empty and unused. Only
memories are left to fill the void where Sears workers once
roller skated from post to post filling mail orders. But a
proposed redevelopment plan would transform this -- into this, a
twenty-three acre mixed use retail and residential center.

Mark Weinstein>> You have an old building, the largest building
in Los Angeles, 1.8 million square feet. For ten years, people
have talked about doing something with it. Nothing has
happened. So that's the challenge for us.

Toni Guinyard>> Mark Weinstein likes a challenge. He is the
President of MJW Investments, the developer not only behind the
proposed Sears plan, but he's also responsible for the
transformation of the Santee Court project. It's one of several
projects in which older buildings that have already performed a
lifetime of service are undergoing a rebirth as housing. The
signs of change can be unexpected.

Mark Weinstein>> Over here to the right, see the yellow
building? It's called the Bailey Hat Building. On the top of
that yellow building is a pool and Jacuzzi.

Toni Guinyard>> There is also a basketball court and even a
mini putting green, indications that life is moving off the
streets and onto rooftops in downtown Los Angeles. This is
Santee Court, nine former garment manufacturing buildings in Los
Angeles's downtown fashion district. It's just one of many
sites where historically significant buildings are being
converted into housing units or work quarters, the renovations
encouraged by a citywide ordinance embracing adaptive re-use.

Robert Harris>> They're fancy words for taking advantage of
what we already have and renewing it for new good usage.

Toni Guinyard>> USC Architecture Professor, Robert Harris,
calls the Santee Court project a good example.

Robert Harris>> It has a kind of freshness to it as if it was
something we made today, which turns out to be true, and
something that has historic meaning as well. So that balance
between carrying the best of what we've had in the past forward
with us as we make our own contribution and go into the future,
it seems to me that's the model. That's what we want to try to
do.

Mark Weinstein>> The building over here, 315 A Street, is being
built as condos right now. The demo is underway. There are
sixty-four for sale condos. The waiting list is 720 people, so
that's why we're building more condos.

Toni Guinyard>> 720 people?

Mark Weinstein>> Right.

Toni Guinyard>> And you haven't even started --

Mark Weinstein>> -- we just started demolition.

Toni Guinyard>> Where others saw crumbling old buildings
constructed between 1911 and 1912, Weinstein saw promise.

Mark Weinstein>> It's already a vibrant area, but there's no
housing. What was missing was both the conveniences for the
people that work here, you know, like the Rite Aid and the
little markets, the things that you need because you're so busy
in your life. Also, what happens if you want to live down here
because of the work, so this kind of solves a lot of different
issues that we have down here.

Robert Harris>> All of it has been added, adapted, put back
together so that it not only makes beautiful lofts and housing,
but also wonderful courtyards and good space from the ground
level for other mixed uses of commercial and retail uses.

Toni Guinyard>> Also on the ground level, a pocket park and
promenade.

Mark Weinstein>> Everyone has told me this couldn't be done.
Santee Court, you know, they didn't believe we could do it.
They ignored us.

Toni Guinyard>> He isn't being ignored now nor is his adaptive
use plan for renovating the Boyle Heights Sears Tower and store.

Mark Weinstein>> Now Sears, once again, they said it couldn't
be done. Not only are we doing it, but we're doing it the way
the community wants.

Robert Jimenez>> They want to see some anchor tenants, some
major tenants. They want to have a variety in their shopping.
They want to have other restaurants, other retail outlets.

Toni Guinyard>> They also want jobs and affordable housing.
They want to have a say in what goes into their neighborhood.
In this community, the one-time Sears Roebuck and Company
distribution center is a reminder of what once was. The Boyle
Heights Sears opened for business in 1927, but most of the
structure has been closed for years except for the first floor
retail store. It's a throwback to times past.

Robert Jimenez>> A lot of the older residents of the community
have an affinity with that. The much younger generation sees it
as a landmark, some official landmark, but they haven't really
been able to experience the full use of it.

Mark Weinstein>> What the people in the area asked for and what
came out and what we're now giving back to the community is 714
units, and 674 of them will be condos. Twenty percent of those
will be affordable condos. There will be forty apartments, all
completely affordable apartments, and about seven to eight
hundred thousand feet of retail, including the Sears retail
that's already there.

Toni Guinyard>> Some residents believe the redevelopment plans
for Sears represents an opportunity for the people living in
this community. After years of seeing people grow up and move
out, some say it's time for Boyle Heights to become a
destination.

Rosalie Gurrola>> We'd love people from across the bridge, from
downtown and other parts of this city to come, you know, in and
we all mix it up and have that opportunity. But people come in
when there is something to come in to.

Mark Weinstein>> They believe they deserve what the other areas
of Los Angeles have gotten. You know, they've been long
neglected and left out and they want their piece of the pie.

Rosalie Gurrola>> We do spend money. There are a lot of us
here and while, per capita, the income of a given family may be
low, this is a very dense community, so there is a lot of money
power out there. The Sears that's there now, I mean, that's a
fact. I'm glad the structure is still here for the historical
reasons. I respect history of communities and landmarks, but at
this particular moment in time, I look forward to what could be
and what could be is exciting if it's done right.

Toni Guinyard>> And in order for the proposed project to
thrive, it must have the community's support.

Robert Harris>> There really are two subjects. One is the
continuity of life in the neighborhood and that is whether the
uses within the adaptive buildings, especially the uses at the
ground level, at the sidewalk level, are uses that are of any
interest to the neighborhood, for people who live there. And if
there are enough of those that people go there fairly often to
do the things they need to do anyhow, then it becomes quickly
their place as much as the rest of the neighborhood has always
been their place.

Toni Guinyard>> Their place. For Boyle Heights residents, it's
the historic Sears store.

Mark Weinstein>> We're going to create a community park. We're
going to do a wedding chapel on the roof, pool, a lot of open
areas and community space.

Toni Guinyard>> The retail store will remain open for business
as it has for years. While some residents are calling for
change --

Rosalie Gurrola>> -- I've seen the community change a lot and
I'm here. You know, I'm here for the duration, whatever
happens.

Toni Guinyard>> There are some things they demand stay the
same.

Mark Weinstein>> It is a new urbanism. It's also -- you know,
people are really looking more and appreciating the past.

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Val>> If Southern California summers aren't hot enough for you,
just wait. In about ninety-five years, the average temperature
in California will rise by a stunning ten degrees. That's the
conclusion of a new report on global warming. I talked with
environmental attorney, Mary Nichols. Nichols is Director of
UCLA's Institute of the Environment. She is also former head of
the California Resources Agency where she shapes California's
clean air, water and conservation programs. We met near the
Arboretum on the UCLA campus. What did you first think when you
read this report? Because it sounds severe. A ten degree
average temperature, you know, temperatures like Death Valley in
Riverside? It's kind of frightening.

Mary Nichols>> Well, of course, the information is alarming,
but I was actually delighted that it got out because I think,
until people see this information in a format and a context that
they can relate to, what does it mean for my state, for my
community, for my water supply, they don't really grasp what
people mean when they talk about global warming. Global warming
is something that's happening in the arctic, right? That's
really not going to affect me personally.

Val>> Now people don't realize what a huge impact even a small
degree of change can make in a wide variety of things. Not
just, gee, we're going to be hotter.

Mary Nichols>> What they've shown is that just a few degrees of
temperature change will lead to an increase in deaths from heat,
stroke and some other effects of heat. It turns out that high
heat episodes kill more people than earthquakes or any epidemics
that we know about. Just plain old heat knocks people over if
they're already sick or vulnerable, especially older people who
are more likely to live in places that don't have extreme air
conditioning available to them, and poor people for the same
reason. We also will see a loss of crops. There are certain
crops that just won't grow when the temperature gets too high.

Val>> And the grapes are going to be affected, you say?

Mary Nichols>> The vineyards which are certainly one of our
most profitable commodities here in California will be very much
impacted by that. They need those foggy cool days in order to
produce the great California wines. But also, there are a lot
of creatures, animals and plants, that will lose their habitat
as a result of a change in temperature and they'll just move.
Basically, a whole species will be concentrated in smaller and
smaller areas living in little islands gasping for breath
because it's just too hot for them anymore.

The rise in the sea level means that wetlands and all the
diversity that they bring, fish and bird life, will be
disappearing. We'll lose some of our coastline as a result of
it. California's coastline is not only beautiful and a
wonderful attraction for tourists and recreation. It's
economically our most important area of the state.

Val>> Now one of the things I recall reading is that this study
predicted that possibly within the next century we will lose
almost ninety percent of our snow cap, which is where we get our
water?

Mary Nichols>> Yes. The problem for us here in the arid west,
particularly here in California, is that the people live where
the water isn't. The water falls in the form of snow in the
Sierra and we've engineered a multi-billion dollar system to
capture the runoff from that snow, from the snow melt, and then
bring it down through pipes and aqueducts to Southern California
where the people are and where the crops grow. If the snow
doesn't come where it's supposed to or if it comes in the form
of rain early on in the winter that falls all over the state as
opposed to just nicely along the Sierra, we don't have a means
to capture that water.

Val>> It's lost. It just runs off.

Mary Nichols>> It will completely be lost to us. It will just
flow across the land and through ditches and underground
channels, aquifers, out into the ocean and be lost to us. So
all of that has got to be redesigned, rethought, re-engineered
and, even then, it's not clear that we'll be able to adapt in
time for it to not have some pretty serious impact on the urban
water supply.

Val>> So if we have a pretty frightening future, they're also
calling for some pretty drastic changes basically giving up
gasoline powered cars. Fossil fuels have to be ushered to the
past very quickly and alternative fuels, but we don't think
they're doing that very quickly.

Mary Nichols>> Actually, we know a lot more than we did, let's
say, ten years ago about what's possible in the future
particularly when it comes to the automobiles. There are
technologies that are now in use in hybrid cars that are
actually being offered for sale right now that could get us over
the hump in terms of the emissions from the internal combustion
engine.

It's true that, when it comes to electricity, to the power that
we need to operate our businesses, to provide us with heating
and cooling and so forth, there we haven't had a lot of
breakthroughs in technology. We're still pretty much using
natural gas the way we did in the past, or hydro. The hydro is
going to be a problem because of the impact to the water supply.
So we're going to need to look at whether there is a new fuel or
a new way to use the old concept of nuclear power, but make it
something that could be safer and more benign.

Val>> The study also said that, even if we make some drastic
changes in how we live, the temperature is still going to rise
but only by four to six degrees instead of ten. So it sounds
like we're in for a hotter future, regardless.

Mary Nichols>> I think it's clear now that there's nothing we
can do to prevent some warming from happening. It's already
happening. It's too late to stop it. But California, because
of our size, could make a difference to the overall global
picture and we could help make our own future safer and less
severe.

Val>> There are critics who say that the data is not all that
reliable or that there's just not enough of it to really come to
the conclusion that we're experiencing global warming. You
know, critics have been around for a long time refuting this
stuff. What's your response to them?

Mary Nichols>> What the skeptics are trying to do is to point
out maybe a degree here or an assumption there that could shift
the assumptions and also to point out that it isn't a disaster
everywhere. Some parts of the globe may benefit from being a
little warmer than they were before. You know, if you live in
northern Canada, you might be quite happy about getting an
increase. But for most of the people in most of the places on
our globe where civilization exists, a small change really is a
very dramatic difference.

But in the meantime, states like California can lead the way by
showing how we can benefit our economy, get ahead of the curve
in terms of adopting new technologies that are going to be
beneficial, and help to make the problem less severe. So I see
this as really paving the way for self-help, for not waiting
around for big brother to come in and do it for us, but saying
this is an issue where we're all going to have to make a
contribution to solving the problem. We all have a stake in it,
so let's get on with it.

Val>> Mary Nichols, you're head of the Institute of the
Environment at UCLA, and thank you again for your time.

Mary Nichols>> Thank you.

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Val>> Sometimes you can see something a half dozen times and
never really know much about it. Well, that's probably the case
for traditional Mexican dance. As Vicki Curry tells us, Mexican
dance has grown in popularity on this side of the border thanks
in part to the Pacifico Dance Company.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Mariachi music and folklorico dancing are part of
the fabric of Southern California. The Mexican heritage is
obvious, but few people really know how it all started.

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> Folklorico comes from the root word
"folklore" which has to do with the traditions and the customs
of a group of people that have been passed down from generation
to generation, specific cultures. So when people hear
folklorico, it's here in the states, it has to do with -- it's
synonymous with Mexican folk dancing.

Vicki Curry>> Many Mexican-Americans are taught the traditional
folk dances, but a select few take folklorico out of the
neighborhoods and into the concert halls. Adriana Astorga-
Gainey is one of those people. She created the Ballet
Folklorico del Pacifico.

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> Pacifico Dance Company is a group, I
would say, of passionate dancers that have come, I'd say,
together to dance Mexican folk dancing, but in a different
style, the style that was created and developed by Amalia
Hernandez, founder/choreographer of Ballet Folklorica de Mexico.
She herself was a modern dancer and incorporated modern ballet
moves into the traditional folk dances.

[Film Clip]

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> I had seen its company and I knew
that, if I was going to do Mexican folk dancing, it was going to
be in that style, that it was going to be in that manner. It
was going to be theater. It was going to be big.

[Film Clip]

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> "Don't hop, don't hop. Stay low, stay
low."

Vicki Curry>> Adriana is a native Californian, but she had the
rare opportunity to study folklorico at Amalia Hernandez's
school in Mexico.

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> My father was a ballroom dancer. He
was brought up in Mexico City. He was brought up and danced
himself. As little girls, he'd take us to Mexico City on summer
trips and he introduced us to the Palace of Fine Arts. It's
just this beautiful building. We saw this beautiful show and we
said, "Daddy, this is what we want to do."

Vicki Curry>> Her father enrolled her in school in Mexico City
and she spent her summers being taught by the masters. But for
the rest of the year, Adriana had to figure it out for herself.

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> I'd done my training on my own,
knowing that I have to take technique classes of ballet, modern.
At fifteen, I was able to go in and start taking classes to be
part of the company in Mexico City, so I saw the training that
was going on.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Adriana Astorga-Gainey and her friends started
Ballet Folklorico del Pacifico in 1992. Back then, there wasn't
a company in Los Angeles dancing folklorico in this style. They
set out to share the culture of Mexico with audiences with added
theatrical elements and classically trained dancers.

[Film Clip]

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> Aside from showing people and
educating them about just how beautiful Mexico is and its music
and its dancing and the costumes, but it's more than just what I
think a lot of people tend to think it is. It can be in a
beautiful setting. It can be in a theater. And it can be an
experience that you come out and say, wow.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Once the company became accomplished in the
traditional Mexican dances, Ballet Folklorico del Pacifico began
experimenting with other forms of dance. It started
incorporating techniques like ballet and modern dance into its
choreography and, after its tenth anniversary, the company
changed its name to reflect this evolution. It's now called
Pacifico Dance Company.

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> I wanted to explore some more
contemporary issues and ideas and I knew that the only way to do
that, the traditional wasn't going to be able to do it. The
only way to do that would be for me to fuse the two together, to
bring in some more lyrical forms of dance in order to explore
those contemporary ideas and issues.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Those ideas have included dances about enduring
Mexican symbols like artist, Freda Callo, and the Virgin of
Guadalupe. To create these new works, Adriana turns to
choreographers with expertise in other areas of dance.

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> They've come in and, with my ideas
I've expressed to them, I said how can I do this? I know I
can't do it with my knowledge of just traditional folk dancing
and my limited knowledge in ballet and modern.

[Film Clip]

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> Once we've got the scenario and the
idea down, then we talk about music, and the music will pretty
much tell you what style of dancing we're going to do.

[Film Clip]

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> I don't think there has been a person
who hasn't seen or been exposed to the traditional folk dancing.
But these new pieces, because they are new, people I think are
curious.

Vicki Curry>> That curiosity helps Pacifico Dance Company
fulfill its mission to share Mexican culture with audiences
throughout Southern California and the world.

Adriana Astorga-Gainey>> Part of my job and responsibility is
to educate the audience about folklore, folk dancing, dancing
for the people from the people. One of the nicest compliments
I've ever got about the company was from a dear friend who said,
"When I went to see your show, you made me so proud to be
Mexican." I thought, you know, that's what it's about.

Val>> The Pacifico Dance Company has a couple of performances
scheduled for this September. For details, you can go to their
website at pacificodance.com. And that's our program. I'm Val
Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching.
We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.