NELA RC Advisory Committee Explores River-Related City Plans

The NELA River Collaborative project builds upon the growing momentum of efforts already underway to transform the Los Angeles River into a "riverfront district" and to create a focal point of community revitalization. For more information visit www.mylariver.orgKCET Departures is the media partner of the Northeast Los Angeles Riverfront Collaborative.

This past Tuesday at the L.A. River Center atrium, members of the NELA Riverfront Collaborative and the NELA RC Advisory Committee reconvened to become more educated about river-related city plans that affect the River and neighborhoods in the northeast.

City Planner Christine Saponara, from NELA RC partner Department of City Planning (DCP), presented on the L.A. River Revitalization Master Plan, the L.A. River Improvement Overlay (RIO), and the Cornfield Arroyo Specific Plan (CASP). The three official efforts within the planning department contain years of work to generate ideas on transforming the River and adjacent land into a flourishing recreational, environmentally sound, and livable urban area.

The NELA RC will build off the plans in order to create a vision plan led by the DCP, that will create a sustainable economic development and civic engagement vision plan for the River and the surrounding northeast neighborhoods of Lincoln Heights, Cypress Park, Glassell Park, Elysian Valley, and Atwater Village.

At the advisory committee meeting, members asked relevant questions of how the plans would affect their neighborhoods, and how best to interact with the plans in order to create a sustainable economic development effort for the river and the neighborhoods. The advisory committee members will work with the NELA RC to further explore sustainable economic development ideas at the NELA RC summer policy engagement events, which will be focused on placemaking, food policy, workforce development and jobs, planning and mobility, and sustainable economic development. For more information about these meetings, visit www.mylariver.org.

As part of the meeting, members of the NELA RC and the Advisory Committee took part in an exercise where they mapped and described the change they want to see in and around the River. Their ideas can be viewed below: