At Downtown L.A.'s former brownfield site, the potential for a green industrial park is in its budding phase. The proposed CleanTech Manufacturing Center would be established on a city-owned 20-acre parcel in a defunct industrial area near 15th Street and Santa Fe, south of the 10 Freeway. Primarily functioning as a green industrial park for manufacturing businesses, nearly 1 million square feet could meet the area's growing demand for alternative energy sources, including solar and wind power, as well as other clean technologies. Additionally, city officials are hoping to create jobs, turning a depressed section of the City of Angles into a booming center for environmentally sustainable companies.
By offering tax breaks and other incentives, the city hopes to attract businesses to the downtown site that has a checkered past in its own right. Once a bus manufacturing plant, the area was contaminated by industrial waste, thus requiring a costly and labor-intensive cleanup. Then there were designs to use the site for a garbage incinerator and a state prison, raising hair on the backs of community groups that successfully opposed and snuffed out the project. The city's fresh and forward plan is to create the hub of what it hopes will become the CleanTech Corridor along the Los Angeles River.
The proposal will go out to green businesses between now and the year's end in an effort to "shop" the idea before putting the project out for formal bid in 2009. As of now, the city plans to retain land ownership while potential developers must come into the project with tenants on board. It is estimated that the CleanTech Manufacturing Center's first companies will open their doors in 2010. Whether or not green technology can revitalize a downtrodden neighborhood is something that time will reveal. Certainly interest-generating and media-friendly development goals have been set, but commerce and employment must go hand-in-hand with promoting eco-consciousness.