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This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Boyle Heights and Arts District residents are joining forces to push for enforcement of an anti-camping zone at the park beneath the 6th Street Bridge, which is expected to open next year.

On Thursday, members of the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council voted 13-1 to sign on as supporters after Arts District residents spearheaded a petition calling for the city to implement such a zone for the sidewalks and perimeter around the future park. 

With this vote, the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council is joining the Arts District Little Tokyo Neighborhood Council and the downtown Los Angeles Residents Association in urging Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, Mayor Karen Bass and city staff to move forward with the designation and to coordinate a security plan for the park. 

The move comes after residents on both sides of the Los Angeles River have raised concerns for months about the possibility of homeless encampments forming at the park. Anti-camping zones — established through Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18 — bar people from sitting, lying, or sleeping in certain public spaces. 

Graffiti is seen at the Sixth Street PARC (Park, Arts, River & Connectivity).

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Steve Saldivar

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The LA Local

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Councilmembers must get buy-in from their colleagues before enacting new 41.18 zones. Proponents, however, point out that the LA City Council in 2024 already endorsed a zone for the 6th Street Bridge, which they believe should extend to the park beneath it. Former Councilmember Kevin de León initiated those efforts.

Jurado, in a statement, said her office is confirming the boundaries as they relate to the park. 

Elsewhere in Los Angeles, efforts to establish or enforce anti-camping zone have received pushback.

In August, the city council approved Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez’s efforts to repeal 12 anti-camping zones that were established under the previous councilmember in District 13. Soto-Martínez’s office said enforcement under the city ordinance interferes with efforts to move unhoused residents into housing.

Jurado said she is open to having “a serious and transparent conversation about how 41.18 is being used and what results it is producing.” She said anti-camping zones are “just one piece of a much larger conversation about keeping this park safe and responding to homelessness.”

“This park represents a major public investment into equitable park space while bridging two historic neighborhoods. Ensuring its success from day one requires the honest dialogue and difficult decisions needed to address legitimate safety and access concerns while recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all solution,” Jurado said.

Known formally as the Sixth Street PARC (Park, Arts, River & Connectivity), the park will feature an arts plaza, complete with a performance amphitheater, garden and terrace seating. Other amenities include a café, dog park, fitness equipment and sports courts.

Construction of the park began in 2023, just a year after the grand opening celebration of the bridge, which connects historic Boyle Heights with the Arts District neighborhood and crosses the Los Angeles River. 

Rendering of Leonard Hill Arts Plaza at the Sixth Street PARC.

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Image courtesy of City of Los Angeles, Bureau of Engineering

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Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council board member Shmuel Gonzales, a local historian and community organizer, voted in favor of an anti-camping zone designation because he wants the park “to be something that ultimately benefits the community.” He said residents fought hard to get the park built on the Boyle Heights side. 

Enforcement of an anti-camping zone would mean “that we’re getting the city to take responsibility,” and it would be a way to deter private security and business improvement districts from bringing “negative capitalist forces into our neighborhood.”

Gonzales said there should be proper signage of anti-camping zones. It should be a fair process, he said, “so that people aren’t surprised and the city knows that they’re responsible through their own signage to facilitate the transition of these people into housing.”

Boyle Heights resident Margarita Amador, the neighborhood council’s secretary, said she wants the park to be “protected, safe and usable for the community.” 

Amador was in support of the neighborhood council “joining forces” with the Arts District and downtown because Boyle Heights, she noted, has the biggest recreational section of the park, including the soccer field and water splash area. 

“We don’t want it to be a MacArthur Park,” she said. “If you don’t have a plan in place, it’s going to become a MacArthur Park … It’s not probably the solution, but at least it’s something that can be enforceable.”

Tom Trafelet, who created the petition, told Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council members that he wants equity on both sides of the bridge. 

“I just don’t want it to be just the Arts District getting everything and you guys getting nothing,” said Trafelet, who has lived in the Arts District for more than 20 years. “I hope that we can work together and join forces and create a safe space for families to come and enjoy it because it’s an absolutely beautiful park.”

The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles was paired with an equally elaborate arts festival: 10 weeks of programming around the region that included more than 400 performances and led to the launch of the Los Angeles Opera.

Fast forward more than 40 years, and lawmakers and experts are questioning whether L.A. can pull off a similar success in the summer of 2028, with less than two years to go.

“We had an opportunity to have a longer runway leading up to the Games…We had a lot of time,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, who was on the City Council when it negotiated the 1984 Olympic Games and closely observes plans for 2028. “And it just didn’t happen.”

Yaroslavsky and others testified Wednesday at a state hearing on the 2028 “Cultural Olympiad,” the arts and culture programming that will accompany the coming Games in Los Angeles.

At that meeting, officials from organizing committee LA28 and the city and county arts and culture departments laid out their plans, which will launch in the summer of 2027. They’ll include neighborhood festivals, a mural program, posters designed by local artists and partnerships with L.A.’s cultural institutions.

The planners presented a vision of arts sprawled across the region, lifting up local artists and bringing performances and installations into L.A.’s public spaces — but they were less clear on how the programming would be funded and who would be included.

The city of L.A. has already set aside $15 million for Olympics arts programming, but further fundraising for the Cultural Olympiad is still ongoing, according to LA28 and the city.

State Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, who represents neighborhoods including downtown L.A. and Exposition Park, told organizers she was concerned that without clarity on funding opportunities soon, organizers would leave out community groups and artists in neighborhoods that need the investment, like Altadena, South L.A. and East L.A. She also wanted to know how much money LA28 was earmarking for local artists specifically.

“Given the short timeframe and given some of the structure I’m seeing, I’m a little concerned,” she said.

Dwayne Jones, a LA28 vice president working on the Cultural Olympiad, told lawmakers that they were raising “tens of millions” of dollars for the program, but didn’t offer specifics.

What’s in the works 

L.A.’s Olympics arts programming will launch in July of 2027, with a poster series designed by local artists. LA28 will also facilitate a program for L.A. institutions to apply to be an official part of the 2028 Cultural Olympiad, put on a film series, and offer subsidized tickets to cultural institutions and events.

The city of L.A. is planning its own local arts festivals in each council district, and will install new murals around the city tied to the Olympic and Paralympic Games. L.A.’s Department of Cultural Affairs has drafted plans to expand to a seven-week citywide festival if it can secure $25 million in additional funding.

“ We want L.A. to know that the Games are not happening to L.A., but happening for L.A.,” said Daniel Tarica, who leads that department, at Wednesday’s hearing.

Lessons learned from past Olympics

The Olympics may bring a lot of spectators to the region, but it does not typically flood local cultural attractions, such as museums. In fact, during the 2012 Olympics in London and 2024 Olympics in Paris, some museums reported a decline in visitors, according to Tawny Paul, a professor of history at UCLA who studied those recent festivals.

Paul told lawmakers on Wednesday that to counteract these lulls, L.A.’s 2028 arts offerings should cater to locals, and institutions would need to bring their offerings out of their normal locations and into the areas around competitions and fan zones.

She also offered lessons from the 1984 arts festival, which she said was lauded as a success, but faced criticism for focusing on international artists, rather than artistic communities in Los Angeles. Some in L.A. were so upset by the 1984 Cultural Olympiad, Paul said, that they put on their own fringe festivals in response.

Like Smallwood-Cuevas, Paul also warned that it would take greater resources to include smaller community-based art groups in the Cultural Olympiad.

“One of the things that the Cultural Olympiad can do really well is help lend visibility to different arts offerings,” she said. “But what I’ll warn is that visibility without resources would favor institutions and communities that already have capacity.”

California has more solar power than it can use during the day, and while the state is increasingly storing that energy in batteries, there’s a simpler strategy to help too: changing behavior.

“If we can better align our consumption with the sun, we use more clean energy, we reduce pressure on the grid in the evening, and we eventually lower costs for everyone,” said Magali Delmas, a strategy professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and Institute of the Environment.

Solar and wind power are also the state’s cheapest source of electricity (our high electricity costs are mostly driven by utilities distributing that energy and shoring up the grid in the face of worsening wildfires and increased electrification).

Delmas is the research lead on a pilot program launched this month by L.A.-based nonprofit electricity provider Clean Power Alliance. For the next two years, 4,000 customers will get lower cost electricity during the day, then Delmas and her team will analyze the data to see if more people actually used it. (Customers don't pay Clean Power Alliance anything for generating the solar electricity but still have to pay the utility that delivers it.)

“The question is whether free electricity in the middle of the day is enough to change habits,” Delmas said.

The work could inform future rate incentives that also reduce stress on the grid during high demand.

It’s not an entirely new idea — Australia has experimented with periods of free electricity.

Time-of-use rates also aim to incentivize behavior. Delmas said this pilot provides a larger financial incentive given the electricity generation cost is set to $0. The Clean Power Alliance estimates it could save customers hundreds on their electric bills per year.

The pilot also focuses on customers who have already electrified their homes to a certain extent — they can’t have rooftop solar, but maybe they swapped a gas stove for induction, a gas water heater for an electric heat pump, or have an electric pool pump or electric vehicle they charge at home. Though the pilot isn’t adding customers, qualifying customers can sign up any time for the pilot’s rates.

“We're also in the business on the climate side of trying to actually incentivize electrification,” said Ted Bardacke, chief executive of the Clean Power Alliance.

Though it may seem impossible to reschedule when you charge your EV or run the A/C or dishwasher, Bardacke said increased automation can be key to managing the future grid.

“Most dishwashers today have a delay setting, so why not hit that delay setting to run beginning at 8 o'clock in the morning?” Bardacke said. “Let's say you have an air conditioner with a programmable thermostat. Why not run the air conditioning from 2 to 4 [in the afternoon] when the electricity is not costing you [as much] and have it nice and cool when you get home?”