Little Tokyo Community Council’s Opposition to the 4th & Central Cold Storage Project
The Little Tokyo Community Council (LTCC) opposes the 4th & Central Cold Story Project (the Project) in its entirety upon the recent actions by Continuum Partners and the City of Los Angeles. The unexpected scheduling of the Project’s first public hearing for November 20, 2024 and recent release of the Final Environmental Impact Report, demonstrate a lack of genuine interest in meaningful engagement with stakeholders and the community to address our concerns and needs.
For over a year, LTCC has made ongoing efforts to work in good faith with Continuum Partners, the City of Los Angeles Department of Planning, and representatives of Council District 14 to reach a project proposal that LTCC could support. We have shared our concerns with Continuum Partners and the Council District, and we have asked for Continuum Partners to come share with the broader Little Tokyo community the changes they made to the Project – changes that were never presented to us before they were made and without any dialogue with Little Tokyo to understand whether the changes would address our concerns (which they do not). Unfortunately, the efforts by the development team have been superficial at best, non-responsive and dismissive at worst – including the last minute cancellation by the development team of a scheduled presentation of project changes to the Little Tokyo community and the failure to reschedule this presentation.
Little Tokyo and LTCC are no strangers to external forces seeking to impose their visions and values on our community, often with no regard for and at the detriment of our own. The 4th & Central Cold Storage Project is no different. From the first time Little Tokyo became aware of the Project, we have been clear with both the developer team and the City that it does not align with our Sustainable Little Tokyo vision for the neighborhood and that we have many concerns, including its impacts on other adjacent neighborhoods of Skid Row and the Arts District. LTCC’s record of concerns can be found in our comment letter to the Project’s Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) as well as in our specific list of concerns, co-created with over 100 stakeholders in the Little Tokyo community and approved by LTCC. These concerns include, but are not limited to:
Dramatically increased density and building heights, exacerbating land speculation making it more expensive to acquire land and build affordable housing in and around Little Tokyo, furthering gentrification in and around this already at-risk cultural community.
Providing the bare minimum of affordable housing (exact details still yet to be provided by the developer), while a majority of residential units will remain luxury market rate rents, well out of reach for existing residents in the neighborhood and for most Angelenos.
No contribution to the development of broader safe bike and pedestrian infrastructure to connect the Project to the Metro Regional Connector station and/or the L.A. River bikeway. Any bike lanes and sidewalk improvements along these connections will be paid for by L.A. taxpayers.
Demolition and construction required for a project of this size will create significant air quality and noise impacts on nearby residents, businesses, senior housing, preschools and places of worship that have provided local services for over 100 years.
On November 6, 2024, the Little Tokyo Community Council voted to formally oppose the 4th & Central Cold Storage Project as proposed. We call on the Little Tokyo community, our stakeholders, our allies in communities across Los Angeles, and our neighbors in Skid Row and the Arts District to stand with us in opposing the 4th & Central Cold Storage Project by:
Submit OPPOSITION comment letters on the Project to the City
Join the November 20, 2024 public hearing on the Project and voice your OPPOSITION through public testimony
Call Council District 14 to express your OPPOSITION to the Project
It is well established that over the 140+ years of Little Tokyo’s history, the neighborhood has endured multiple waves of displacement, harm and erasure – from the wholesale uprooting and imprisonment during WWII, City-led eminent domain and redevelopment, and most recently gentrification and displacement of the Downtown area, including related to Metro’s Regional Connector construction. Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo is one of only three remaining Japantowns in the country and was recently declared one of the country’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Not only are we constantly fighting for our physical existence as a cultural neighborhood and touchstone for Japanese and Japanese Americans in Southern California, but we’re also an environmental justice community exposed to some of the worst air quality in the region as a result of being surrounded by freeways, warehouses, and truck routes.
This is, sadly, another painstaking example of public planning processes and private real estate development ignoring and perpetuating the same systemic harms on lower-income communities of color. Generations of racist land use policy and planning practices have been exacerbated by unrestrained market forces driven by profits over people and community. We continue to call on the Department of City Planning to demonstrate its commitment to equity and solidarity, and DO BETTER!