Las Urbanistas

Health concerns are cited for a proposed moratorium on such eateries in South L.A., which has the city’s highest concentration of them.

By Tami Abdollah, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 10, 2007

As America gets fatter, policymakers are seeking creative approaches to legislating health. They may have entered the school cafeteria — and now they’re eyeing your neighborhood.

Amid worries of an obesity epidemic and its related illnesses, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, Los Angeles officials, among others around the country, are proposing to limit new fast-food restaurants — a tactic that could be called health zoning.

The City Council will be asked this fall to consider an up to two-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in South L.A., a part of the city where fast food is at least as much a practicality as a preference.

“The people don’t want them, but when they don’t have any other options, they may gravitate to what’s there,” said Councilwoman Jan Perry, who proposed the ordinance in June, and whose district includes portions of South L.A. that would be affected by the plan.

In just one-quarter of a mile near USC on Figueroa Street, from Adams Boulevard south, there are about 20 fast-food outlets.

“To be honest, it’s all we eat,” Rey Merlan said one recent lunch hour at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. “Everywhere, it’s fast food everywhere.”

Merlan said it wasn’t likely that a limit on new restaurants would change peoples’ habits, even though he thinks it’s a good idea.

A Times analysis of the city’s roughly 8,200 restaurants found that South Los Angeles has the highest concentration of fast-food eateries. Per capita, the area has fewer eating establishments of any kind than the Westside, downtown or Hollywood, and about the same as the Valley. But a much higher percentage of those are fast-food chains. South L.A. also has far fewer grocery stores.

Thirty percent of adults in South L.A. are obese, compared with 20.9% in the county overall, according to a county Department of Public Health study released in April. For children, the obesity rate was 29% in South L.A., compared with 23.3% in the county.

And the figures are higher than a decade ago. In 1997, the adult rate was 25.3% in South L.A. and 14.3% in the county. South L.A. also has the highest diabetes levels in the county, at 11.7%, compared with 8.1% in the county.

“While limiting fast-food restaurants isn’t a solution in itself, it’s an important piece of the puzzle,” said Mark Vallianatos, director of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College.

This is “bringing health policy and environmental policy together with land-use planning,” he said. “I think that’s smart, and it’s the wave of the future.”

Fast-food restaurants haven’t missed the cue: From their menus, diners can choose salads over burgers, yogurts over shakes and grilled over fried these days. And many food manufacturers have reconfigured their recipes to eliminate trans fats, the most unhealthful unsaturated fats made of partially hydrogenated oils.

But especially for children, what’s to eat is not completely a matter of choice. Legislators in California and elsewhere are giving closer scrutiny to school food. In 2002, the Los Angeles Unified School District was one of the first school districts in the country to ban soda, candy and other high-fat snack foods from school vending machines as of July 2004. The next year the school board decided to reduce sodium, sugar and fat in school lunches. At the federal level, there are proposals in the farm bill to spend an additional $3 billion over five years on fruits and vegetables for school programs.

A California law banning sugary drinks and limiting the fat and sugar content of foods sold in middle and high schools took effect in July. And the state enacted legislation last year to increase the purchase of fruits and vegetables to be sold in corner stores in lower-income communities.

Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) introduced a bill in Congress in June that, among other things, would try to increase the availability of nutritious foods in economically depressed areas.

Regulations by cities Some cities already regulate fast-food restaurants in certain areas, including Berkeley and Arcata, Calif.

Port Jefferson, N.Y.; Concord, Mass.; and Calistoga, Calif., ban fast-food restaurants in certain districts entirely, according to L.A. city planner Faisal Roble, who drafted Perry’s ordinance.

But those earlier regulations are primarily tied to aesthetics or to the protection of smaller businesses, rather than to health concerns, said David Gay, L.A.’s principal city planner.

Perry’s ordinance — a moratorium intended to give the city time to come up with a long-term plan — would, if passed, affect more than 700,000 residents of South Los Angeles, including West Adams, Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park.

Compared with the Westside, for example, that area has far fewer restaurants — about 900 versus 2,200, according to The Times’ analysis. And about 45% of the restaurants in South Los Angeles are fast-food chains or restaurants with minimal seating, compared with 16% on the Westside.

The analysis also highlights underlying issues that have plagued other lower-income urban areas around the country. Such concentrations of fast food have helped cultivate a reliance on their price and convenience, said Gwendolyn Flynn, policy director for the Community Health Councils, a Los Angeles health policy advocacy organization.

Catalina Ayala, 23, who grew up in South Los Angeles, lives three blocks from a McDonald’s and a slew of other fast-food restaurants, and eats fast food about four times a week.

“By the time I go home, it’s already too late to cook food,” said Ayala, who works at LAX.

On a recent afternoon, Ayala and her husband were at a McDonald’s. Their 3-year-old son played in the indoor playground, which for some families serves as their children’s park.

But her husband, a 23-year-old construction worker in South L.A., said he avoids fast food.

“It’s not for me,” he said. “Later on sometimes, your son is too fat, he eats too much.”

That was one reason Terrah Cephas, 32, left South L.A. for the Valley about two years ago.

“It’s fast food on every corner, but it’s not enough wholesome restaurants,” she said. “You literally have to be willing to drive to Long Beach or Santa Monica, or Inglewood.”

That’s if you have a car.

Many South L.A. residents are “almost a captive audience for these restaurants, unfortunately,” Flynn said.

In South Los Angeles, 28% of people live in poverty, compared with 16.2% of the county, according to county figures.

South L.A. has lots of fast-food restaurants because these restaurants do well in areas where people might not want to spend $15 on lunch, said Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of Foodservice Strategies at WD Partners, a restaurant consulting firm that works with Red Lobster, Jamba Juice and Fatburger, among others.

But there also may be missed opportunities: According to a 2005 market study contracted by the city, South L.A. loses more than $400 million annually in general merchandise, grocery and restaurant sales to outside areas.

“The community has suffered for decades by an assumption that attracting business of any type is good, and it’s not true,” Perry said.

The city defines fast-food restaurants as those that sell food to eat there or to take out and have a limited menu, items prepared in advance or heated quickly, no table orders and disposable wrapping or containers.

“Part of the debate is even what is fast food, and it’s a tricky thing,” said city planner Gay. “Everybody has an impression, but when you try to write an ordinance, you have to be very legalistic about it.”

Industry oppositionThe restaurant industry opposes such ordinances, in part because it’s hard to define fast food, and although Perry’s proposal allows for exceptions to the ban, some say that’s not enough.

Restricting new restaurants to full-service, sit-down spots is “like saying we’re not going to allow anybody to sell Chevrolets anymore because we want people to buy nothing but Mercedes-Benzes,” consultant Lombardi said. “It’s convoluted logic. If the objective is to get full-service, upscale casual dining restaurants in an area, I think the first step is finding out why they’re not coming in an area, then start addressing those, and start by incentivizing.”

The city already offers such incentives in South L.A., including speedier permit processing, Perry said.

And there’s no way to ensure one result: getting people to change their eating habits.

tami.abdollah@latimes.com

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.

By ROBIN POGREBIN Published: September 10, 2007

Visitors wandering through the Richard Pousette-Dart exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum seem oblivious to the scaffolding and hard hats in their midst. But for the people behind the scenes, the work unfolding within the museum’s curved white walls is as engrossing as the art displayed on them.

For the last three years a team of engineers, conservators and architects has been studying the guts of the Guggenheim, mapping out a thorough but respectful renovation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiraling building on Fifth Avenue, completed in 1959. Although it was clearly in serious need of renewal, with cracks in its facade, a decaying sidewalk and outdated mechanical systems, experts wanted to make a comprehensive diagnosis before determining the best course of treatment.

Now they have a plan — already in action — and the end is in sight. The work is expected to be completed by summer 2008. “It’s taken us three years to get to the point where we’re actually intervening,” said Pamela Jerome of Wasa Studio, the preservation architect on the project.

And on a recent walk through the museum, which will remain open throughout the renovation, the specialists involved talked about what they had discovered and strategies they have devised. Ms. Jerome has faced major renovation challenges before, including the sagging cantilevers and damaged stucco of Fallingwater, the residence designed by Wright in rural Mill Run, Pa.

But the Guggenheim’s structural complexities, she said, made this project more daunting. In addition to repairing the facade, the $29 million renovation involves upgrading the cooling systems and updating the elevators and bathrooms.

Perhaps the team’s most crucial realization was that workers in the 1950s had failed to provide continuous horizontal steel reinforcement in the walls on the sixth ramp, as they had on the lower ramp walls. The sixth is twice the height of the lower ones and leans outward at a different angle, the museum says.

The original building lacked insulation. In a 1992 project devised by the architect Charles Gwathmey, insulation was finally installed, improving the situation. But some gaps were left on the apron slab, where the floor meets the wall, creating condensation problems that are now being addressed. Strips of carbon fiber are being installed in the concrete walls to create a seamless, protective exterior envelope.

As the work proceeds, the walls’ interiors are exposed, as they must have been when the building was under construction. “It’s the first time we’re seeing what Frank Lloyd Wright saw,” said Glenn Boornazian, president of Integrated Conservation Resources, who is the principal conservator on the project.

Wright is never far from anyone’s mind. Paramount goals are to make the work almost imperceptible and to adhere to the building’s original form to the greatest extent possible.

“From a preservation point of view, you don’t want to change the external appearance,” said Robert Silman, president of Robert Silman Associates, the project’s structural engineers.

When it came to the windows and skylights, then, the specialists wanted to improve them without replacing them. The windows, though, are not double-glazed and don’t provide adequate insulation. So the architects decided to replicate their form but substitute new glass with advanced thermal qualities that has been tested for water and air infiltration. (They have not yet undergone tests for pigeon-proofing, Ms. Jerome said).

Similarly the conservators tried to find repair materials — concrete patching compounds, acrylic crack fillers, expandable surface coatings — that “would be physically and aesthetically compatible,” Mr. Boornazian said. After identifying about 20 manufacturers that deal with concrete restoration, they narrowed the list to six and then subjected their materials to rigorous weather testing.

“Just as Frank Lloyd Wright was on the cutting edge of using materials, he forced us to think of solutions in unusual ways,” Mr. Boornazian said.

Wright was among the first to use gunite — sprayed concrete — on a large architectural scale, which allowed him to create his smooth unbroken curves, Mr. Boornazian said. To give the Guggenheim’s surface a monolithic appearance, he added, Wright left out expansion joints, which would have created visual vertical breaks.

Wright’s professional reputation has emerged intact, experts involved in the project say. The building’s flaws lay in its execution, not its conception. Exposed to high winds and extreme variations in temperature, the walls have continually expanded and contracted. They will still be flexible but will become more resilient, with concealed control joints that allow the gunite to expand and contract without cracking.

As part of its preparatory research the team studied the Guggenheim’s archives, including photographs taken during construction; written documentation of the building process; correspondence between Wright and the contractor; and original architectural and shop drawings.

The building was then stripped of as many as 11 layers of paint, and experts conducted a 17-month survey of thousands of cracks of varying magnitude in the facade. Using impact-echo technology, in which sound waves are sent into the concrete and the rebound is measured, the engineers located voids within the walls.

To map the geometry of the museum and determine its load-bearing capacity, the engineers relied on laser measuring, a fairly tricky matter given the building’s spiral and its sloping walls. “We think it’s the largest laser model ever constructed,” Mr. Silman said. “It took up the whole memory on the computer.”

They also submitted their findings to two peer review panels of experts in architectural restoration, materials conservation, structural engineering as well as an environmental envelope specialist.

“We all believe, when we finish, this building will be better than new,” said Marc H. Steglitz, the museum’s chief operating officer. “And we’ll get another 50 years out of it.”

By MANNY FERNANDEZ Published: September 10, 2007

On Sept. 10, 1932, one minute after midnight, a 7-year-old boy named Billy Reilly dropped a nickel into a turnstile and boarded an A train at 42nd Street. It was a southbound express, and it was Billy’s first ride on an A.

It was the city’s first ride, too — 171,267 passengers rode it that September day in 1932, its first day of operation. The line, then called the Eighth Avenue subway, spanned only 12 miles and 28 stations, from the top of Manhattan to the bottom.

Some 75 years later, the A line stretches farther than it did back then, literally and culturally.

Over the years, the A line has become less of a train and more of an icon, a symbol of the nearly 500,000 varied and eclectic New Yorkers and others it carries through the city daily. The A line is certainly not the oldest run in New York’s subway system, nor has it ever been the smoothest-running, the most punctual or even the cleanest. But an argument could be made, thanks in part to Duke Ellington’s up-tempo stamp of approval, that it is perhaps the coolest.

“There’s no 6 train song or D train song,” said Dr. John Morrow, 33, a cardiologist who rode a packed A train recently on his way to lunch. “The A train has a little more cultural significance.”

Today, on the A line’s 75th birthday, transit officials will celebrate with a ceremony at the start of the line at the Inwood/207th Street station. A special train made up of six prewar cars is scheduled to provide service along the line’s original route to the Chambers Street stop in Lower Manhattan.

Back in 1932, the new subway was part of the Independent Subway System, or the IND, the first city-owned subway network. The IND competed with two private subway systems, the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation and the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, which opened first, in 1904. The city took control of the BMT and IRT in 1940.

The Eighth Avenue subway, which took seven years to build, was the IND’s first line, and it dazzled riders with longer stations to accommodate 10- and 11-car trains, wider platforms and sleek R1 cars manufactured by Pullman Standard.

“The R1 cars that ran on the A train at that time were phenomenal,” said Stan Fischler, a subway historian who has written several books about the city’s subway system. “If you had put air-conditioning into them, they’d be good enough to run today.”

The A train is the longest line in the system — 31 miles, from northern Manhattan through Brooklyn to Far Rockaway in Queens. New York City Transit, the arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that operates the subways, says it is the longest subway line in the world.

The A often feels like the city’s very own transcontinental railroad, traveling deep under the ground and soaring high above it, below the bustle of Washington Heights, past old tombstones in graveyards in Ozone Park, over the waters of Jamaica Bay. Perhaps the most famous section is the run under Harlem heard between the notes of Ellington’s recording of “Take the A Train,” which was written by Billy Stayhorn.

“Think about what a bargain it is,” Mr. Fischler said. “For two bucks you go all the way to Rockaway. Do you realize what that would cost you in a taxi? You couldn’t afford the tip.”

There is a strange symmetry to the line. You step on at the 207th Street station in Inwood in northern Manhattan, and you step off at the Far Rockaway/Mott Avenue terminal in Queens, near a western Long Island hamlet named Inwood. (Some trips end in Ozone Park and some in Rockaway Park.)

Those riding the A train the weekend before its anniversary, however, could hardly enjoy such uninterrupted, long-distance travel: Because of weekend track work, people had to board shuttle buses to get from Howard Beach to the Rockaways.

“I did not know I was going to be on a bus, but you kind of expect it on weekends,” said Shamiyah Brown, 27, who rode the shuttle bus with her seven children and her niece on Saturday. “I’m not surprised.”

The A train’s first registered complaint was apparently made just minutes after it began running, when a man at the Chambers Street station became upset because he had put two nickels into a malfunctioning turnstile.

Since then, the line has gotten mixed reviews from passengers and the Straphangers Campaign, a rider advocacy group. In the group’s latest report card, which ranks the city’s 22 main subway lines from best to worst, the A train was tied for 12th place. The group found, among other things, that the line arrives with below-average regularity.

The A line has been crippled by fires (the January 2005 blaze at the Chambers Street station, for instance) and has seen its share of tragic and bizarre occurrences.

The limbs and torso of a 19-year-old Brooklyn man were found in a blue plastic bag in a tunnel in 2005. Pigeons have been known to step aboard trains at the outdoor Far Rockaway stop and casually step off at the next station. In May 1993, a man posing as a subway motorman took an A train with hundreds of passengers for a three-and-a-half-hour ride. He made 85 stops, and arrived on time at the Ozone Park/Lefferts Boulevard station.

On Saturday afternoon, the line that carried Billy Reilly on its inaugural run — he moved to the front of the crowd at the 42nd Street station when a transportation commissioner learned he was born the day of the new subway’s groundbreaking, March 14, 1925 — carried Dr. Morrow, who sat reading and listening to a Tom Waits song on his iPod.

It carried Ernest Rivera, 28, an unemployed father of three from Brooklyn. It carried Gunther, a Manhattan couple’s white puppy. It carried a middle-aged woman with a tattoo on her chest, a man holding a surfboard and another man who had remembered to wear his A train T-shirt.

Rudy Worrell, 54, knelt on the floor and played his flute and duct-taped keyboard. Mr. Worrell remembered taking the A train as a boy, to play hooky from school. Years later, he would return to the A, unemployed and homeless, playing his music aboard it for small donations.

“This is my bread and butter,” he said as the train rumbled along. “Ain’t nothing like the A train.”