CASE STUDY CLOSER LOOK
BRADLEY AVENUE PLAZA Demonstration F Interim Design Project Type: Pedestrian Plaza Location: Los Angeles, CA Sponsor Organization: Pacoima Beautiful Agencies Involved: Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) Photos: Joe Linton
CONTEXT Bradley Avenue Plaza is an interim public plaza in the Pacoima neighborhood of Los Angeles. The project transformed an underutilized dead end street into a pedestrian plaza, providing much needed public space and improving the connectivity between a previously isolated low-income housing development and the rest of the Pacoima neighborhood. Pacoima Beautiful, a local non-profit environmental justice organization, obtained permission to create the plaza through the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s (LADOT) People St Program. The People St program allows eligible community partners to apply for approval to create projects that enhance the public realm. To streamline the approval process and bring community benefits faster, the program is focused on three pre-approved project types: parklets, bike corrals, or plazas. Community partners choose from a “Kit of Parts” of relatively
Bradley Avenue Plaza in action (LADOT / James Simmons).
low-cost materials, also pre-approved by the city. The program structure allows LADOT to work with community partners to quickly create interim public spaces, with the expectation that the interim designs will be evaluated every year until capital funds are available for permanent construction. The cost and maintenance responsibilities for People St Plazas, like Bradley Avenue Plaza, are shared between the Community Partner and the City. The City pays for and installs the colorful surface treatment, identity and wayfinding signage, and perimeter planters. The City also makes any necessary adjustments to traffic striping and signals to effect the Plaza footprint. The Community Partner is responsible for funding and installing the plaza furnishings and maintaining / cleaning the plaza elements and planter plant materials. Community Partner is also responsible for programming activities.
DESIGN PROCESS After submitting an initial application to the People St program, Pacoima Beautiful hosted a plaza demonstration. Enabled through a block-party permit, this one-day event accomplished two important goals: (1) it allowed residents to experience how their street could be transformed, building community support for the plaza, and (2) it allowed community members to become actively involved in designing the plaza. Attendees were invited to choose their preferred plaza elements from the pre-approved LADOT Kit of Parts, and Pacoima Beautiful worked with community organizations to program the space, illustrating how the plaza could be activated. Less than a year after the pop-up, the People St plaza was constructed, using low-cost, interim design materials permitted in the Kit of Parts. The interim plaza reflects the community vision articulated at the demonstration project: the plaza includes lounge PROJECT APPLICATIONS · 125