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Expo Line Transit Yard or Cultural Arts Center?
The Santa Monica Daily Press digs into city council minutes from 1989 finding that Bergamot Station, now a large art gallery complex and cultural center, was bought by the city of Santa Monica to be a future rail storage and maintenance yard for the Expo Line, which is now under construction in its first phase from downtown to Culver City. "Expo officials examined more than 40 sites from Downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica where the line is proposed to terminate, assessing properties such as Bergamot but opting against the station partly because of its identity as a cultural resource, said Monica Born, the project director for Expo Phase II," found the newspaper. Instead, Bergamot, which was originally a Red Line trolley stop beginning in 1875, is one of the proposed stops for the light rail's second phase.
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