The Brief

Diablo Canyon, California’s sole remaining nuclear power plant, has been left for dead on more than a few occasions over the last decade or so, and is currently slated to begin a lengthy decommissioning process in 2029. Despite its tenuous existence, the San Luis Obisbo power plant received some serious computing hardware at the end of last year: eight NVIDIA H100s, which are among the world’s mightiest graphical processors. Their purpose is to power a brand-new artificial intelligence tool designed for the nuclear energy industry.

Pacific Gas & Electric, which runs Diablo Canyon, announced a deal with artificial intelligence startup Atomic Canyon—a company also based in San Luis Obispo—around the same time, heralding it in a press release as “the first on-site generative AI deployment at a U.S. nuclear power plant.”

For now, the artificial intelligence tool named Neutron Enterprise is just meant to help workers at the plant navigate extensive technical reports and regulations — millions of pages of intricate documents from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that go back decades — while they operate and maintain the facility. But Neutron Enterprise’s very existence opens the door to further use of AI at Diablo Canyon or other facilities — a possibility that has some lawmakers and AI experts calling for more guardrails.

PG&E is deploying the document retrieval service in stages. The installation of the NVIDIA chips was one of the first phases of the partnership between PG&E and Atomic Canyon; PG&E is forecasting a “full deployment” at Diablo Canyon by the third quarter of this year, said Maureen Zawalick, the company’s vice president of business and technical services. At that point, Neutron Enterprise—which Zawalick likens to a data-mining “copilot,” though explicitly not a “decision-maker”—will be expanded to search for and summarize Diablo Canyon-specific instructions and reports too.

“We probably spend about 15,000 hours a year searching through our multiple databases and records and procedures,” Zawalick said. “And that's going to shrink that time way down.”

Trey Lauderdale, the chief executive and co-founder of Atomic Canyon, told CalMatters his aim for Neutron Enterprise is simple and low-stakes: he wants Diablo Canyon employees to be able to look up pertinent information more efficiently. “You can put this on the record: the AI guy in nuclear says there is no way in hell I want AI running my nuclear power plant right now,” Lauderdale said.

That “right now” qualifier is key, though. PG&E and Atomic Canyon are on the same page about sticking to limited AI uses for the foreseeable future, but they aren’t foreclosing the possibility of eventually increasing AI’s presence at the plant in yet-to-be-determined ways. According to Lauderdale, his company is also in talks with other nuclear facilities, as well as groups who are interested in building out small modular reactor facilities, about how to integrate his startup’s technology. And he’s not the only entrepreneur eyeing ways to introduce artificial intelligence into the nuclear energy field.

In the meantime, questions remain about whether sufficient safeguards exist to regulate the combination of two technologies that each have potential for harm. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was exploring the issue of AI in nuclear plants for a few years, but it’s unclear if that will remain a priority under the Trump administration. Days into his current term, Trump revoked a Biden administration executive order that set out AI regulatory goals, writing that they acted “as barriers to American AI innovation.” For now, Atomic Canyon is voluntarily keeping the Nuclear Regulatory Commission abreast of its plans.

Tamara Kneese, the director of tech policy nonprofit Data & Society's Climate, Technology, and Justice program, conceded that for a narrowly designed document retrieval service, “AI can be helpful in terms of efficiency.” But she cautioned, “The idea that you could just use generative AI for one specific kind of task at the nuclear power plant and then call it a day, I don't really trust that it would stop there. And trusting PG&E to safely use generative AI in a nuclear setting is something that is deserving of more scrutiny.”

For those reasons, Democratic Assemblymember Dawn Addis—who represents San Luis Obispo—isn’t enthused about the latest developments at Diablo Canyon. “I have many unanswered questions of the safety, oversight, and job implications for using AI at Diablo,” Addis said. “Previously, I have supported measures to regulate AI and prevent the replacement and automation of jobs. We need those guardrails in place, especially if we are to use them at highly sensitive sites like Diablo Canyon.”

How AI came to SLO

Before Lauderdale moved into artificial intelligence and nuclear energy, he founded a health care software company called Voalte, which was designed to help hospital staff communicate over iPhones, reducing their reliance on loudspeaker paging and desktop computer systems. At the time, circa 2008, Lauderdale said his pitch was met with worries and resistance from hospital staff. He likes to draw parallels between that experience, which culminated in 2019 when he sold his company to a hospital bed manufacturer for $180 million, and the pushback he’s heard about Atomic Canyon.

In 2021, Lauderdale moved to San Luis Obispo so he, his wife, and kids could be closer to his wife’s family in Northern California. Lauderdale told CalMatters he didn’t realize how close Diablo Canyon was to his new home until after he relocated. It was through meeting Diablo Canyon workers out in the community, he says, that he learned more about nuclear energy and landed on his next startup idea.

Atomic Canyon launched in 2023 with a task of downloading roughly 53 million pages of publicly available Nuclear Regulatory Commission documents, which encapsulate all of America’s nuclear energy fleet and are available on a database called ADAMS. That process started around January 2024, after Lauderdale gave the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a heads-up about what Atomic Canyon was planning to do: “I reached out to [the commission] just to say, hey, I'm Trey Lauderdale, American citizen, entrepreneur. We're going to start building AI in the nuclear space, and we just wanted to make sure the NRC was aware that when they see all these downloads, it's not a foreign actor or someone trying to do anything bad to their system.”

Lauderdale said the commission supported Atomic Canyon’s efforts. After downloading the data, Atomic Canyon partnered with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to kick off research and development. The lab houses the Frontier supercomputer, which was the world’s fastest when it debuted two years ago. Atomic Canyon used Frontier to build a form of AI that can perform “sentence-embedding models,” which Lauderdale says are capable of processing nuclear jargon and are less likely to “hallucinate,”or answer a question using fabrications.

“You basically teach the artificial intelligence how to understand nuclear words, their context, what different acronyms mean,” he said.

In the spring of 2024, Lauderdale and PG&E representatives kicked off formal discussions about how Atomic Canyon could be of use at Diablo Canyon. PG&E soon invited Atomic Canyon staff to visit the nuclear facility, where they shadowed employees for a few weeks, “observing where there were operational inefficiencies that we could try to target with AI,” Lauderdale said.

Then, in September 2024, Atomic Canyon announced the completion of testing on its AI, referred to as “FERMI”; these models, which are open-source, are what collectively make up the Neutron Enterprise software. A few months later, in November, came the first-of-its-kind announcement with PG&E.

How Neutron Enterprise works

PG&E brought in NVIDIA hardware to Diablo Canyon to run FERMI. Zawalick and Lauderdale both told CalMatters that the Neutron Enterprise software is being installed without cloud access so that sensitive, internal, documents don’t leave the site. Zawalick said their data storage policies meet all Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy nuclear information requirements, and will be continuously tested and inspected.

Initial Neutron Enterprise users are currently only using the software to search through publicly available regulatory data. PG&E and Atomic Canyon hope to initiate the next phase of Neutron Enterprise’s rollout in the third quarter of 2025, when more on-site employees will be able to use the service, and it will be able to search for and summarize internal documents by utilizing optical character recognition (which allows more documents to be indexed), and retrieval-augmented generation (which allows more flexible querying).

According to Lauderdale, the use of artificial intelligence to speed up document searches isn’t risky. If AI fails to find the information sought by a worker, the person can “just fall back to the previous way they would search,” he said, referring to sifting through multiple on-site databases and sometimes manually pulling paper files.

Pacific Gas & Electric vehicles are parked at the PG&E Oakland Service Center in Oakland on Jan. 14, 2019.

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Ben Margot

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AP Photo

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Neutron Enterprise also generates short summarizations of documents while users are searching databases, and it’s possible those summarizations could produce incorrect information, too — but they would not alter the actual contents/instructions contained within the documents that are read over by workers.

CalMatters asked a number of state lawmakers — especially those near Diablo Canyon — what they think of Atomic Canyon’s first-of-its-kind partnership with PG&E. The consensus response was positive, though tailored to Neutron Enterprise’s currently limited functionality.

Malibu Democratic Sen. Henry Stern, a member of the Senate Energy Committee, told CalMatters he’s “reticent to rain on AI tools that can do better grid management,” so long as proper safety protocols are followed. Democratic Sen. John Laird, who represents San Luis Obispo, took an even-keel stance: “As AI integration expands, so does its energy demand… Balancing technological advancement with public safety, environmental stewardship, and regulatory oversight will be critical in shaping AI’s role in our state’s energy future,” he said. San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener, whose ambitious AI safety legislation was vetoed by the governor last year, agrees with his Democratic colleagues: “If AI can help improve the day-to-day efficiencies of Diablo Canyon, that's great.”

Out of five San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors, three responded to requests for comment. Supervisor Bruce Gibson said that “using AI to access and organize required information in this situation makes sense,” but he stressed the need for transparency and public updates from PG&E. Supervisor Heather Moreno said that it’s a good thing PG&E will be taking “advantage of a ‘supercharged’ search engine… As it will not be used for operations, this appears to be a good first step in using AI at Diablo Canyon.” And Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg, a former PG&E employee, said she was “encouraged” that Diablo Canyon was working with Atomic Canyon “to navigate the enormous amounts of data collected from thousands of pages of audits and reports.”

Varying rules and regulations

However innocuous the use of AI at Diablo Canyon today, there are big-picture concerns about how the technology could later be used there and at other facilities. “I think we have to be really careful when we talk about broader AI decision-making,” Wiener said. “That's why it's really, really important to beef up government capacity to set standards around use of AI in sensitive contexts such as a nuclear power plant.”

In November 2024, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Inspector General Robert J. Feitel came to the same conclusion. He identified “planning for and assessing the impact of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on nuclear safety and security” as one of the nine major challenges the agency faced. The month prior, a commission-sponsored report by the Southwest Research Institute looked into artificial intelligence-related “regulatory gaps” in the nuclear energy industry. It found fewer than 100 gaps, but also noted that “no practical AI standards were identified” from outside sources that could help address those gaps. The report recommended developing a number of AI-specific guides.

Atomic Canyon and PG&E appear to be keeping the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the loop on their own accord. “I wouldn't claim we have an official relationship with the NRC, but we make sure to brief them on what we're doing, because, being newer in the nuclear industry, surprises are bad,” Lauderdale said. He believes that the nuclear energy industry’s cautious approach will, in itself, act as a “natural buffer” against overly invasive or dangerous AI integrations, though he conceded that “as we start to traverse into applications that do introduce risk, we absolutely will want guardrails and regulation to make sure that AI is properly deployed.”

When CalMatters first spoke with PG&E’s Zawalick in December, she mentioned she’d just recently met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s AI working group, an advisory committee of sorts. Since then, she hasn’t had further discussions with the commission about AI regulations, she recently told CalMatters.

And the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee, a state-appointed safety group that inspects the nuclear facility and provides recommendations about its operations, first learned about PG&E’s deal with Atomic Canyon through media reports, the committee’s legal counsel Bob Rathie told CalMatters. In December 2024 and January 2025, a committee representative participated in two fact-finding visits about Neutron Enterprise, meeting with PG&E workers to learn more about the software. The committee concluded from those visits that Diablo Canyon’s use of artificial intelligence is “positive,” and they have no safety concerns at this time.

What happens next?

Lauderdale spoke to CalMatters while traveling to another nuclear facility, though he couldn’t reveal which one. He said that Atomic Canyon is “in discussions” with “many other nuclear organizations,” and that some “really exciting announcements” will come later this year. Through Atomic Canyon’s partnership with Diablo Canyon, he wants to demonstrate a proof of concept for existing nuclear facilities, as well as companies interested in building or re-commissioning nuclear facilities. He hopes Diablo Canyon’s lifecycle is expanded beyond the current decommissioning timeline, but if it’s not, his software can be used for the facility’s decommissioning process, he said.

“As we gain more trust in the product and build out more capabilities, we will pick other non-risky activities that will take off one-by-one, and we'll keep creating more value with this new technology,” he said.

Responding to questions about whether the rollout of AI at Diablo Canyon has had sufficient oversight, Lauderdale reiterated that his startup product does not have a significant operational role.

“I consider our company the leader in deploying AI and nuclear,” he said, before giving a future-facing assessment that left the door just slightly ajar: “and I think we will not have AI running nuclear power plants for a very long time.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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About the chick: The chick hatched March 14. The zoo opened its Cape vulture enclosure in February 2025 after years of planning to encourage the birds to roost and nest, welcoming a new breeding pair that year. When it grows to be an adult, it’ll have a wingspan of 8 1/2 feet.

About the enclosure: The L.A. Zoo said it spent years developing the vulture habitat, which was designed to mimic the vultures’ natural environment in South Africa. Dominick Dorsa II, the zoo’s director of animal care, said in a statement the successful hatching is “a testament to the design and construction” of the habitat.

How to see the chick: You can’t for the time being. Zoo officials are keeping it away from visitors until the chick matures, though you can still see adult Cape vultures at the zoo’s enclosure.

Though visitors will have to wait until the chick matures to see it in the enclosure, you can still take in the impressive eight and a half foot wingspan of the adult Cape vultures.

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Courtesy Jamie Pham/L.A. Zoo

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What zoo officials are saying: “Welcoming a Cape vulture chick is a thrilling moment for our team and a beacon of hope for African vultures,” the L.A. Zoo’s curator of birds Rose Legato said in a statement. “Vultures are one of nature's most misunderstood marvels, and I cannot wait for our guests to eventually watch this chick grow and learn just how vital they are to our ecosystems.”

About the species: Cape vultures are listed as a vulnerable species due to human activities and encroachment. According to the L.A. Zoo, African vultures are more closely related to eagles and hawks than vultures native to the Americas, like the California condors that just hatched last year at the L.A. Zoo.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

What should have been a celebration for formerly incarcerated youth completing a reentry program at the Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory (BHAC) last week instead ended with seven students and two staff members detained by the Los Angeles Police Department, according to witnesses. 

Now, nearly a week later, BHAC staff and city officials are demanding answers from the LAPD, with some accusing officers of racial profiling. 

According to the LAPD, officers observed a large group gathered on the corner of Cesar E. Chavez Avenue and Mott Street around 4:16 p.m. on March 26. Authorities then requested backup for what they described as “a large group surrounding officers,” LAPD Public Information Officer Tony Im said. 

The group, classified by police as an “aggressive gang group,” consisted of seven 18-year-old students from the BHAC’s Bridge Academy Movement (BAM) program and two BHAC staff members.

The BAM program pays formerly incarcerated youth to complete 200-250 hours in media and visual arts training to prepare them for creative careers. That day, students were set to showcase their work at the BAM program graduation for families and community members. 

Rene Weber, a teaching artist at the BHAC, had been with the students setting up for the ceremony minutes before the incident occurred. 

According to Weber, the students had gone to coffee across the street at Milpa Kitchen as they often did, when staff were alerted that they were being detained. 

Weber said he arrived to find students and a staff member pressed against the wall in handcuffs. 

Video from the scene, taken by a staff member at the BHAC, shows multiple officers surrounding the group. At one point, an officer orders a person to “get on the wall” and displays a stun gun.  

“No, none of that, these are kids right here,” the staff member replies.

Another staff member, Teotl Veliz, recorded a large police response.  

“I counted 12 cop cars, that’s at least 25 cops, and they had a helicopter,” Veliz said. “It was just so comedic, tragically comedic, that it was on their graduation day too.”

Officers established a perimeter with yellow tape along the side of Ashley’s Beauty Salon as local business owners and witnesses gathered around the students. 

“I was just incredibly disappointed in LAPD… because it became so apparent to everybody, all at the same time, that it was racial profiling and nothing else,” Veliz said.

Weber said officers gave shifting explanations for the stop at the scene, including blocking the sidewalk and possible underage vaping. After Weber told the officers that all of the students were 18, they said they would investigate whether the group had any gang affiliation. 

Police have not responded to questions about what led officers to believe that the group was gang-affiliated. 

Weber recalled pleading with the officers to let the group go and explaining to them that they worked across the street. Community members and local business owners also stepped in to vouch for the students. 

“Our job is to help them gain a new perspective on life,” Weber said. “They’re coming out of juvenile detention and they’re turning their lives around. We can do our part in keeping them off the streets and keeping them doing better but what does it mean if they’re going to be profiled and treated exactly the same way?” 

In total, seven 18-year-old students and two staff members were detained. BHAC staff said one student and one staff member were taken to Hollenbeck Community Police Station and released less than two hours later after advocacy from community members and Councilmember Ysabel Jurado.

The incident ultimately resulted in an infraction for smoking a cannabis e-vape on a public sidewalk, according to a photo of the infraction shared with the Beat. LAPD did not provide details about the people taken to Hollenbeck Station or the infraction. 

The graduation ceremony was cancelled that night and is expected to be rescheduled in April. 

“Graduation should be a moment of pride and possibility — not fear,” Jurado said in a statement. “I’m seeking answers about what occurred, and this underscores the need for stronger relationships between law enforcement and community organizations so moments like these are protected, not disrupted.”

Carmelita Ramirez‑Sanchez, the conservatory’s executive director, said she was grateful to the community and Jurado for advocating for the students’ release. Jurado met her at Hollenbeck Station within 20 minutes of being alerted to the incident, she said. 

“They had store owners, señoras, barbers, that ran out and were trying to explain to the police who our kids were,” Ramirez‑Sanchez said. 

Still, she said the incident tarnished what should have been a joyous celebration.

“I imagine that what this does is derail this entire idea that you can be an active participant in your own restorative growth,” she said.

Angelenos crowned the region’s worst intersection Thursday in a social media competition — a tangle of streets on the border of Los Feliz and Sunset Junctions.

The intersection is at Virgil Avenue and Sunset and Hollywood boulevards near the Vista Theater.

“It took me so long to go to the Vons to the Vista and nothing was happening. It wasn’t like it was constant traffic,” said Mr. Glen Dale, the anonymous account holder of Americana at Brand Memes and the mastermind behind the competition. "There is something wrong here that this is so disorganized.”

After a month of voting across about 30 rounds, the Beverly Hills six-way stop came in second place, which seemed to upset some of the account’s more than 115,000 followers.

“I was shocked at the amount of comments each day,” Mr. Glen Dale told LAist. “It felt like a therapy session in the comment section of people complaining about each intersection and really diving into which one is worse.”

This year’s basketball-less twist on March Madness, the “One Bad Intersection After Another” bracket, pitted dozens of infamous intersections against each other with rounds divided by general geographic area: “East Side-ish,” “West Side-ish,” “Central LA-ish” and the “Valley-ish.”

Mr. Glen Dale said he designed it to be a democratic process for people to collectively crown the worst in L.A. once and for all. The results are more based on bad vibes and voters’ personal experiences rather than traffic volume and accident data.

To celebrate the winners Thursday, Americana at Brand Memes shared some of what the account does best — curated L.A. memes.

Mr. Glen Dale also drove to each of the final intersections with numbered balloons to represent their rankings, including third place’s Fairfax Avenue / Olympic / San Vincente Boulevards and Lankershim Boulevard / Vineland Avenue / Camarillo Street in fourth.

Angelenos voted the Virgil Avenue, Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards intersection by the Los Feliz border as the region's worst intersection in a competition run by Americana at Brand Memes on Instagram.

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Courtesy Americana at Brand Memes

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Mr. Glen Dale

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The Beverly Hills six-way stop came in a close second. Mr. Glen Dale celebrated each of the top winners with balloons.

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Courtesy Americana at Brand Memes

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Mr. Glen Dale

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Third place for the region's worst intersection went to Fairfax Avenue / Olympic / San Vincente Boulevards from the "Central LA-ish" round.

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Courtesy Americana at Brand Memes

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Mr. Glen Dale

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About the finalists

One Instagram user wrote that they’ve been waiting at the winner “the entire duration of this competition,” with another adding that their “years of suffering at this intersection are finally seen.”

But the six-way stop didn’t go down easily, with a user arguing that it’s the real “essence of chaos” with “no lights, no order, no sanity.”

“EVERYONE IS HONKING,” the user wrote. “Pedestrians are running to cross because there is ALWAYS a car coming at you with a wide-eyed driver white knuckling it while somebody else screams at them.”

The memes took on a voting theme, elections and the Oscars included.

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Courtesy Americana at Brand Memes

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Mr. Glen Dale

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To celebrate the infamous intersection winners, Americana at Brand Memes shared some of what the account does best — curated L.A. memes.

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Courtesy Americana at Brand Memes

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Mr. Glen Dale

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But after spending more than four hours visiting the final contenders on Wednesday, Mr. Glen Dale said the Beverly Hills stop felt pretty breezy and easy compared to the others.

“I think it goes Fairfax 1, Lankershim 2, Virgil 3, Beverly Hills 4,” Mr. Glen Dale said. “So, I'm very different on this one, but I think after going to each one yesterday and having to deal with it, that's my official ranking.”

‘No matter who wins, it's all bad’

On LAist’s AirTalk program last month, Brian in Hollywood nominated Highland and Franklin avenues for the region’s worst intersection, saying it's actually two combined.

Brian said the intersection is affected by Hollywood Boulevard closures and Live Nation events that bring in thousands of people into the area while commuters are trying to get through the Cahuenga Pass.

“It actually has people stopped and blocked in the intersection, not allowing others to go through because of this,” Brian said, who described being hit by a vehicle while walking nearby. “That intersection is a domino effect to all the other intersections surrounding it in the radius.”

Gina in Glendale told AirTalk that the intersection of Fairfax Avenue and Olympic Boulevard is a “horror show.”

“Whoever designed it — if there was a design — a monster,” Gina wrote. “It's always backed up and confusing.”

Rana in Pasadena told AirTalk the Academy Road and Stadium Way intersection in Elysian Park during the morning commute is both “terribly dangerous” and “extremely inefficient”

As with any election, not every voter is happy with the results.

At least one Instagram user wrote that they’re “still pissed that Koreatown beat out Silverlake Trader Joe’s” in last year’s March Madness competition.

For that bracket, Americana at Brand Memes pitted the region’s worst parking against each other, with the dense L.A. neighborhood sweeping the competition after multiple submissions in the comments.

Will LA’s twist on March Madness be returning next year? 

Mr. Glen Dale said he felt the heat from his followers as the results were revealed, but he knows it’s all in good fun.

“You talk to me now, I'm like so exhausted and tired of it that I'm like, I can't imagine doing this again,” Mr. Glen Dale said. “But … you forget, and I'm sure next year I'll want to do it.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Emma Lopez, a mother of two in Koreatown, can picture a new green space in the vacant, dirt lot in her neighborhood.

The lot Kingsley Drive and 4th Street is expected to become a new pocket park through a deal between the city and the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust. The deal has not been finalized yet. But Lopez has her concerns.

Lopez, 44, said many of the parks built in recent years have not been consistently cleaned, making them difficult for families like hers to use.

“I have to take my children outside of the city for clean playgrounds,” she said. “If they’re not going to have regular cleaning and disinfecting of them, then I would be against it.”

The roughly 7,400-square-foot corner parcel would be transferred to the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, which would oversee its conversion into green space.

The proposal is scheduled to be discussed Thursday morning during a meeting of the Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners. The meeting will take place at the Westchester Recreation Center with a Zoom option also available to the public. 

Emma Lopez, a mother of two in Koreatown, can picture a new green space in the vacant, dirt lot in her neighborhood.

Commissioners are expected to consider final authorization to acquire the property for park use along with a commitment of park fees, environmental clearance under the California Environmental Quality Act, and acceptance of Measure A technical assistance funds.

Up to $2 million in park fees collected from nearby developments could be used to purchase the site, according to city records, though additional funding and planning approvals would still be needed before construction can begin.

Some Koreatown neighbors say they welcome the addition of a park, especially since the area  lacks accessible green space.

Andy Rider, who for seven years has lived about a block from the site, said there are few nearby places where residents can spend time outdoors.

“It’d be nice to have a small park for kids here locally that maybe aren’t able to get bikes or drive there,” he said. “I just like something other than looking at a dirt hill every time I pass by there.”

The property has long been eyed for development, with previous plans for a five-story building with 19 residential units.

Now, city officials are looking to preserve it as green space in a part of Los Angeles that has limited park access.

The Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust has led efforts on the site since 2024 and is expected to hand it over to the city if the plan moves forward, according to a staff report from the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

Still, not everyone agrees that a park is the best use for the land.

Chance Morgan, who lives about five blocks from the site, said he would prefer to see the space used for housing. 

“Nothing against it, but personally I would always love more housing above all,” Morgan said. “This is a very cramped area and there’s a lot of people who don’t have a place to live.”

While he acknowledged that a park could benefit some residents, especially those with kids and dogs, Morgan said the need for housing outweighs it.

Others are also thinking about how the space would be used — and who it would serve.

“Hopefully it’s a safe place for homeless people to spend the night,” said Olivia Yoon, who previously experienced homelessness and is now living close to the vacant lot. 

Yoon emphasized that unhoused people are often misunderstood and should not be excluded from public spaces.

“Homeless individuals… they’re very nice people,” she said. “Just because they’re struggling does not mean they use illegal drugs.”

She added that basic resources like water would be critical if the park is built.

“Hopefully there’s a water fountain so they can get water and it’s a safe place for us all, ” she said.

Councilmember Heather Hutt, who represents the district, has voiced support for adding green space in Koreatown.

Spokesperson Devyn Bakewell said Hutt is working with the Recreation and Parks Department to move the project forward more quickly, and that they will soon launch community meetings so residents can help shape what the park will look like and how it will serve the neighborhood.

There are no firm dates for any meetings. 

Tori Kjer, executive director of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, said in an interview earlier this year that Koreatown is so “thoroughly developed” compared to other neighborhoods in LA that there is very little available property for new parks.

The site on Kingsley Drive was the property the land trust ended up buying after nearly two decades of trying to understand and identify different sites in the area, she said. 

Steve Kang, president of the city’s Board of Public Works and a Koreatown resident, said the project — similar to the Pio Pico Library Pocket Park — is part of a broader push to bring more green space into one of the densest neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

“This is a partnership between the city of Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department and the community,” Kang said, noting the site is in an area with many families and seniors.

Kang added that additional funding will be needed to build out the park, and that neighbors will play a key role in shaping what amenities are included.

Based on conversations he’s had, Kang said there is broad support for the project, though some residents have raised concerns about how the space will be used. 

“When you activate a site like this into a beautiful community space, that actually is more of a deterrent for any types of encampments,” Kang said, addressing those concerns.

He said the commission is expected to approve the proposal, which would allow the city to take control of the site and move into the next phase of planning — gathering community input.