Fernando Valenzuela has not thrown a pitch for the Dodgers in 34 years, however he stays beloved in our city, even amongst followers too younger to have seen him play. When the Dodgers introduced their neighborhood caravan to Homeboy Industries not too long ago, lots of of followers of all ages fortunately lined as much as take an image with Valenzuela.
However simply as many followers lined as much as take an image with Father Greg Boyle, the acclaimed founder of Homeboy Industries, which calls itself “the biggest gang rehabilitation and re-entry program on the earth.” For 1000’s annually leaving prisons and gangs, Homeboy gives jobs, coaching and social providers, together with entry to dozens of therapists, tutors, and tattoo elimination specialists.
Its grand imaginative and prescient contains Hope Village, which would supply transitional and inexpensive housing together with new areas for job coaching, psychological well being counseling, and substance abuse remedy. The location envisioned for the village sits beneath what can be one of many towers supporting the proposed gondola from Union Station to Dodger Stadium.
In 2020, Boyle and California Endowment chief government Robert Ross co-signed a letter to Metro and town, opposing the gondola and characterizing it as “a vacationer attraction for the advantage of personal enterprise.”
The gondola, first pitched by former Dodgers proprietor Frank McCourt six years in the past, is scheduled for its first public vote Wednesday.
A Metro committee is ready to think about a workers advice to advance the mission to Metro’s board of administrators. The mission comes with an anticipated development price of as much as $500 million and a projected opening in 2028, and with the lure that the gondola would provide free rides to followers whereas easing congestion and air pollution on the oft-clogged method to the stadium.
A sure vote Wednesday may set the stage for the Metro board to bless the environmental influence report subsequent week, the primary in what can be a collection of required approvals from an assortment of public companies.
The Metro board may have voted final month too, which is what a Metro official instructed would occur throughout a public assembly in December. However proponents don’t need to push the vote except they’ve the votes, and the votes weren’t secured final month.
This month?
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass chairs the board, and he or she appoints three of the opposite 12 voting members. Bass hasn’t stated how she would vote. When my colleague, Rachel Uranga, requested mayoral press secretary Clara Karger what place Bass has taken on the gondola, Karger stated she didn’t know and stated Bass has been busy coping with results of the waves of storms.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, whose district contains Dodger Stadium and surrounding neighborhoods and who additionally sits on the Metro board, declined an interview request from Uranga. A spokeswoman as a substitute offered a 77-word, solely noncommittal assertion from Solis.
The one politician to say a lot of something concerning the gondola is Metropolis Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, whose district additionally contains the Dodger Stadium space. Hernandez doesn’t sit on the Metro board.
If the Metro board approves the environmental influence report, town council would have its say, however Hernandez has launched a movement that might forestall the council from contemplating the mission till town completes its personal research evaluating the gondola in opposition to different technique of bettering transit to Dodger Stadium, together with expanded bus service from Union Station and the sort of regional park-and-ride service efficiently operated on the Hollywood Bowl.
Hernandez advised me she additionally needs to see ensures — not simply guarantees — that development and operation of the gondola can be privately funded, in order that taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook for even a part of the mission.
Former Dodgers proprietor Frank McCourt is proven in Lisbon, Portugal, on Nov. 14, 2023.
(Lukas Schulze / Sportsfile through Getty Pictures)
As well as, though gondola proponents say they’re pitching a transit mission and nothing extra, Hernandez stated she needs proponents to be up entrance about any visions of eventual improvement of the Dodger Stadium car parking zone, co-owned by McCourt.
“On this a part of town, for a lot too lengthy, too many voices have been left unheard and unprotected,” Hernandez stated. “We aren’t shifting this mission ahead at the price of neighborhood to learn one particular person and to complement one particular person.”
Does she imply McCourt?
“Sure,” she stated.
Have his allies reached out to you?
“Sure,” she stated. “With all their would possibly.”
With pro-gondola and anti-gondola forces working to marshal neighborhood help, Father Boyle can be a great man to have in your aspect. Boyle advised me he has met not too long ago with McCourt.
Boyle, who wrote in opposition to the gondola 4 years in the past and whose chief government raised critical considerations in a letter to Metro final yr, now says he’s “impartial.” His considerations that the gondola would hamper the proposed Hope Village, he stated, have been resolved for a while.
So why the conferences with McCourt?
“We didn’t talk about the gondola,” Boyle stated. “We’re making an attempt to launch a marketing campaign for this Hope Village, so we need to get lots of people to assist us with that.”
Did McCourt provide to assist in trade for Boyle dropping his opposition to the gondola?
“Thankfully,” Boyle stated, “that by no means got here up within the 4 conversations I had with him.”
Brin Frazier, a spokeswoman for McCourt, didn’t reply to a message asking which individuals McCourt had spoken with concerning the gondola mission, or not less than how many individuals.
As numerous authorities companies take their votes on the gondola, Boyle stated he would sit this one out.
“My hope is that elected officers will do their job and their due diligence and, if they’ve points, they’ll handle them,” he stated. “That’s on them.
“It’s not a battle that we’re going to battle.”
