Metro approves Dodger Stadium gondola project

Hundreds of group members packed a assembly room Thursday to inform the Metro board of administrators whether or not they favored or opposed Frank McCourt’s proposed gondola to Dodger Stadium. The board already signaled its intent to approve the project without any dialogue among the administrators, but then the board chairman announced it could not hear to any group members before voting.

That touched off an extraordinary riot. In an act of defiance seldom seen within the staid and often formulaic halls of paperwork, the public shut down the assembly.

As the assembly opened, board chairman Fernando Dutra explained that the public would get its say after the vote.

He promptly was drowned out with chants of “Let us speak!” from antigondola forces and responses of “You already spoke!” from pro-gondola forces, since this assembly was Metro’s fourth on the gondola, and its second particularly associated to the adoption of a revised environmental impression report.

Dutra tried to calm the group by saying, “Public comments are allowed at the end of the meeting.” That instead infected the public, and the chants only grew louder and more repetitive, and Dutra threatened to have Metro officers clear the room.

The administrators opted to retreat to a personal room for 75 minutes, dealing with other business and then deciding what to do about the persistent public.

In the assembly room, chants ebbed and flowed from both sides. The antigondola forces handed around a bullhorn. The pro-gondola forces danced around the room. More than a dozen Metro and Los Angeles Police Department officers stood guard, positioning themselves between the public and the empty dais.

The administrators despatched phrase that they’d relent. They would supply one hour for public remark before the vote.

Calm prevailed, and the administrators returned. Of the 52 public audio system, 42 — including three members of the Los Angeles City Council — spoke against the gondola project.

Dutra congratulated the board for coming up with “the right process” to hear from the public.

“This is what happens when you have a democratic process,” Dutra told the group, with a straight face.

The crowd acquired its say, more than an hour late, after the board’s effort to delay public remark until what might need been hours after the vote triggered an rebellion. Then the vote was taken — and, as anticipated, the gondola project was permitted.

The pro-gondola forces applauded. The antigondola forces chanted again: “Shame on you!”

Next steps? And how a lot?

With Metro certifying the revised environmental impression report, numerous state businesses and the Los Angeles City Council will contemplate whether or not to approve the gondola project. The council is unlikely to take up the project until late next 12 months, after it receives a research evaluating site visitors around Dodger Stadium and choices to relieve it.

In 2023 the environmental impression report projected a construction value of $385 million to $500 million. Construction prices only go up, and a project spokesman this week didn’t present an up to date value estimate.

In 2024, Metro’s initial approval required that Metro workers work with the group accountable for getting the gondola up and working to “provide quarterly updates to the Metro board on the project’s progress and financing.”

Those updates had been “not produced because work on the project was paused during a litigation process,” a Metro spokeswoman said.

Thursday’s approval means that litigation course of is over, so an up to date value estimate ought to be accessible in the spring. The project has been promised as privately financed, but no financing agreements have been publicly disclosed.

Bass speaks

The City Council last month voted 12-1 to approve a decision urging Metro to kill the gondola project. The decision went to Mayor Karen Bass, who neither signed it nor vetoed it.

The decision was sponsored by the three councilmembers with districts closest to Dodger Stadium.

“The way the council feels is important to me,” Bass told The Times. “But, if a member from that district is passionate about a project, then the other members are in support of that.

“There is much more time for things to be worked out. I just did not feel that it was appropriate to stop it now.”

Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, whose district consists of Dodger Stadium, said she has labored onerous to develop assist from her council colleagues and present them with options to the gondola by the time the council is predicted to vote on the project next fall.

“In a year from now, you will see the fruition of that,” Hernandez said. “My hope is that my colleagues will see that and keep helping us move in that direction.

“I hope that people take what the council has said seriously. To get a 12-1 vote on any issue, particularly on an issue like this, is not an easy lift. It’s a big deal.”

Bass said she would love to explore how the group can leverage the gondola to handle neighborhood priorities.

“My interest in the project, overall, is in the community benefits — the potential benefit to, most notably, the area around Homeboy Industries, and Chinatown. I’ve been very saddened at the deterioration of the Chinatown that I knew growing up,” she said.

“There are groups pushing that there be more resources put there, and that Frank McCourt contribute more to Chinatown development and redevelopment and revitalization.”