>
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><http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-lapdhome3apr03,1,3417468.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california>http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-lapdhome3apr03,1,3417468.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-california
> From the Los Angeles Times
>
>Urban Pioneers in a Battle Usually Fought in Suburbs
>
>Residents of gentrified downtown lofts don't
>want to live next to the LAPD's new home, but a park as they expected.
>By Steve Hymon
>Times Staff Writer
>
>April 3, 2006
>
>There was a time when a gleaming,
>architecturally edgy new police headquarters in
>downtown Los Angeles might have been welcomed as
>a boost to a bleak urban landscape.
>
>Thirty, 20, even 10 years ago the idea of a
>thriving city center was just that: a vision
>bandied about by planners that never seemed to happen.
>
>And then things changed.
>
>Now, as hundreds of apartments and condos have
>been built downtown and started to fill with
>residents, some of these new urban pioneers find
>themselves in the kind of battle usually fought in the suburbs.
>
>They don't want to live next to the new home of
>the Los Angeles Police Department. Instead, they
>want more open space and an entire block filled
>with a park the way the city originally planned it.
>
>On the other side of the debate is city
>government, which has spent the better part of a
>decade trying to find somewhere to build a
>$340.9-million replacement for Parker Center
>that would be open 24-7, complete with a rooftop helipad.
>
>The city has settled on a site conveniently
>across from the south side of City Hall and also
>bordered by the new Caltrans building, the Los
>Angeles Times building and a turn-of-the-century
>office mid-rise now filled with expensive lofts and some very peeved residents.
>[....]