The Brief

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The long-shuttered St. Vincent Medical Center is set to reopen next month as part of a sprawling behavioral health and housing campus. 

The center, just a few blocks away from MacArthur Park is aimed at addressing homelessness, mental illness and addiction in the area. 

The first phase of the project, a 205-bed interim housing program for people struggling with mental illness and substance use disorders, is scheduled to open in June. The program will be housed at Seaton Hall on South Lake Street, according to developers.

The opening marks the first major milestone in an ambitious redevelopment effort that aims to transform the former St. Vincent campus into a centralized hub for social services.

“We try our best to do this on the streets,” said Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center and a longtime organizer in the MacArthur Park area. “But it’s much easier when you have a physical location. This building may offer us an opportunity to provide services for the category of unhoused people who are chronically ill, who have suffered major mental health issues and also people who are really deeply addicted.”

“I think it’s something that’s been long overdue,” Narro added. 

Additional phases of the redevelopment are expected to open through 2027, with the full campus projected to be up and running before the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, developer Shay Yadin said. 

Yadin said the project is moving fast partly because developers are reusing the existing hospital campus rather than building entirely new facilities.

“We’re not adding a single square foot to this whole place,” Yadin said. “Everything we’re doing is internal renovation.”

The 7.7-acre property has a long history in LA. Founded in 1856 by the Daughters of Charity, St. Vincent is widely considered the city’s first hospital. But after years of financial struggles, the hospital’s previous owner declared bankruptcy and the facility closed in 2020.

Later that year, the property was acquired by Los Angeles Times Patrick Soon-Shiong through his company NantWorks, though most of the campus remained shuttered. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Soon-Shiong sought to use the campus as a coronavirus treatment and research center, according to the LA Times. 

At the end of last year, Yadin’s firm, St. Vincent Behavioral Health Campus LLC, purchased the property for $66.5 million, according to the LA Times. 

Reviving St. Vincent’s hospital

The full redevelopment is expected to cost roughly $300 million, Yadin said, and include more than 800 beds, including interim housing, permanent supportive housing, recuperative care and addiction treatment programs.

The project has rapidly gained support from the state and private sector at a time when California is investing billions into behavioral health infrastructure. The statewide measure Proposition 1 intends to expand treatment facilities, housing and services for people with serious mental illness and substance use disorders.

In a recent social media post, LA Mayor Karen Bass said St. Vincent is “what I’ve wanted to see happen for a long time: a place where people can get treatment, support, and build real, independent lives in permanent housing.”

In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the St. Vincent campus would receive $135.8 million through Proposition 1’s funding to support new mental health and substance use treatment facilities planned for the site.

In April, Health Net and the Centene Foundation, private healthcare partners, also announced a $6 million investment in the campus.

Yadin said the project is designed around what he describes as a “continuum of care” model — bringing housing, treatment and support services together in one place rather than spreading them across different providers and locations.

“A lot of individuals, especially within the unsheltered population, fall between the cracks between one level of care and the next,” Yadin said. “For them to finish a program and then say, ‘Go to the other side of town to organization X to get the next level of care,’ oftentimes these individuals don’t make it.”

The St. Vincent campus is intended to centralize services in one location, something he says is desperately needed when considering unhoused residents.

Some unhoused residents, Narro said, are full-time workers who simply cannot afford rent. Others have been chronically homeless for years and need long-term support. Others struggle with severe addiction or mental illness.

“That’s the more complicated one,” Narro said. “So you have to have a special type of wraparound services for them, which I think this building has the potential for.”

Southern California was built on radio.

"I can still hear the jingle KFWB News 98,” wrote  Taline in Los Feliz, during a recent conversation on LAist's daily news show, AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM. “I grew up hearing that in my dad's minivan on the way to and from school. It has a special place in my heart.”

Back in April, broadcast company Audacy announced KNX News — one of the last-remaining all-news FM stations — was leaving the FM dial where it had simulcast on 97.1 FM since 2021. The station, which is also one of the oldest in L.A., is not budging from 1070 AM where it has been on the air for more than 100 years. The move away from FM officially happened in May to make way for a new sports talk station, which Audacy officials called an area of growth for advertisers in today’s media landscape.

The move is one in a long line of changes for radio and a reminder that before podcasts, playlists and algorithms, many Southern Californians built their days around radio broadcasts.

Radio, a daily ritual

The construction of KNX

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Herman J. Schultheis

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Michael Jackson, a well-known KNX, personality

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Larry Mantle, now in his 41st year hosting AirTalk, remembers being a kid and dreaming of what it might be like to be behind the mic at one of these radio stations.

“ I grew up with KNX," he said. “My dream job as a kid was to be an anchor on KNX or KFWB, the two local all-news radio stations, 'cause there was nothing like hosting AirTalk that even existed at that point.”

Mantle opened up the phone lines on a recent show to hear from his fellow SoCal radio lovers about the shows they miss and the memories they have. Here's what they had to say:

A love for radio, then and now  

A pilot of KMPC's traffic alert helicopter pictured with his daughter and grandson.

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Los Angeles Public Library

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A 1963 picture of Valley State College (now Los Angeles Valley College) preparing to launch KVCM

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Larry Leach

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Los Angeles Public Library

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“When you'd walk down Hollywood Boulevard where the station was, you could hear it playing as you went down the street,” said  Olivia in Glendale about KLAC 570 with Al Jarvis.

 Larry in Yorba Linda shouted out KBCA Jazz for its 24-hour jazz, saying “When I first moved out here in '68 from Phoenix, which had like an hour a week, it was a real wonder.”

 Mark in Glassell Park emailed that he loves KCRW’s Henry Rollins, writing, “I used to bristle at his unique DJ persona, but over time, I came to love him and his crazy eclectic playlists. I find his knowledge in history and punk rock fascinating. He's a gem and a legend."

"I'd like to give a shout-out to all the DJs working at KXLU, the college station at Loyola Marymount University, said  Jeremy in Culver City in an email. “That station's been on the air for nearly 60 years. I believe it's one of the best examples of what's possible with radio."

"KFWB and KRLA back in the day when they were rock music stations —  Dr. Demento, one of my favorite on-air personalities, also had eclectic music taste," said  Carrie in Desert Edge.

“ Dr. Demento was must listening when I was a kid in junior high school at Le Conte Junior High in Hollywood,” Mantle added. “Every Sunday night on KMET, we would make sure we were listening to Dr. Demento and his funny records.”

The question remains…

An 11-year-old winning a car in a KMPC contest in 1963.

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Listener support is vital to any radio station, and it’s clear KNX has many lifelong fans. AirTalk listeners highlighted their support for household KNX names over the decades like Bill Keene, Melinda Lee, Mike Roy and Jackie Olden.

As KNX makes changes, many are watching closely and thinking about the future of radio.

Listeners like Tommy in La Quinta are left wondering if the radio dial will be the same…

“I’m a hardcore listener, but I don't know about casual listeners [and] if they'll tune to AM,” he said.

After months of hand-wringing, Los Angeles and LA28 have come to a tentative agreement on how Olympics organizers will reimburse the city for its expenses for the 2028 Summer Games.

According to the deal, the private Olympic organizing committee will pay upfront for the estimated cost of services that are not eligible for federal reimbursement, like trash pick-up and traffic control. Under another proposal, the city would also be able to tap an LA28 contingency fund if it isn't fully repaid by the federal government for policing costs at Olympic venues.

The agreement is nearly nine months overdue and still needs approval by Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council.

The 2028 Olympics are intended to be privately financed, and an existing city agreement with LA28 states that the Olympics organizers, not L.A., will pay for extra costs for public services in support of the Games. But L.A. is the financial back-stop for the Olympics, meaning if LA28 goes in the red, taxpayers will pick up the bill.

Beyond that, the city services agreement presents another area where L.A. could incur additional unexpected expenses for hosting the Games. L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez warned LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover earlier this year that a bad deal could "bankrupt" the city.

Jacie Prieto Lopez, an LA28 spokesperson, and Paul Krekorian, who leads the city's office of major events, said in statements that the freshly inked agreement would help deliver a fiscally responsible Games.

"Mayor Bass’ priority is that the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games be fiscally responsible, protect taxpayers, and benefit Angelenos for decades to come. This agreement helps deliver that commitment," Krekorian said.

But the contract between the two parties doesn't fully resolve one of the biggest areas of financial risk for the city: the enormous cost of security for an event as extensive and high-profile as the summer Olympics and Paralympics.

Organizers are counting on the federal government to pay for public safety at Olympic venues that are considered part of a "national special security event." That includes costs for LAPD staffing. LA28 has not included security costs in its $7.1 billion budget — a fact that City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto criticized earlier this year.

The federal government has so far allocated $1 billion for security costs for the Olympics. Exactly where those federal funds will go has not yet been determined, and there's no guarantee they will cover all of L.A.'s policing costs.

To address this, city officials have also proposed an amendment to a 2021 agreement between the city and LA28. That amendment would establish that if L.A. is not reimbursed by the federal government for all its eligible expenses, it could dip into LA28's contingency fund of $270 million before the private organizing committee could use those funds for any legacy projects.

But that bucket of money will first be used for any costs that Olympics organizers still owe if they run out of revenue — meaning if the Olympics don't turn a profit, the city's access to that money will depend on how much is left for the taking.

Civil rights attorney Connie Rice, who has been tracking the city's negotiations with LA28, told LAist the agreement was a "PR document" not a deal. She pointed out that if the federal government does not pay up for security spending as expected, L.A. could be in trouble.

" It leaves the taxpayers with a GoFundMe strategy," she said.

The city services agreement lays the groundwork for more negotiations between LA28 and the city. Each venue will require its own agreement, to be negotiated by July 1, 2027. Venues in the city of L.A. include Dodger Stadium, the L.A. Convention Center, L.A. Memorial Coliseum and the Venice Beach Boardwalk.

The City Council's ad-hoc committee on the 2028 Games will meet Tuesday afternoon to vote on the agreement.