Lubell describes the "strange state of affairs" surrounding the competition to work with Metro, the regional transportation authority, to develop the Union Station Master Plan, and the recent public unveiling of "vision boards" from the six competing teams which, as was openly noted, have no relevance to the competition, the purview of the future Master Plan, or what could actually get built.
At Wednesday's show and tell, presenters from the multinational teams, such as Ben Van Berkel, of UN Studio, and Renzo Piano, were given five minutes each to describe their speculative visions for how the neighborhood around the station (stretching from downtown to the LA River) might look in the year 2050.
While imaginative and stimulating, as Lubell notes, "The boards, presented in front of a packed house at the station yesterday, will hold no weight in the team selection. That choice will be made, by the end of June, on the much more nuts-and-bolts basis of qualifications, interviews, data collection, draft alternatives and implementation strategies, aka 'scope of work.'"
What then was their purpose? "'It's about fun and inspiration and the future of Los Angeles,' said Martha Welborne, Metro Executive Director, Countywide Planning, of the vision boards. She appears to be fighting an uphill battle to get the bureaucratic and engineering-driven agency to embrace design. 'It's about opening up their imagination before they have to get serious about the limitations,' she noted, of the architect/engineer teams' proposals. 'These are not going to get built.'"
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Union Station "Master plan"
There already IS a master plan for Union Station, particularly as anyone who has ever seen the mural on the 3rd floor mezzanine in Metro's HQ can attest, or who has read the Alameda District Plan intrinsically understands. This next step is key to dealing with the real question: What becomes the land surrounding Union Station, primarily north, south and east, and the role the City itself should play in transforming that area to facilitate not just development on the Union Station campus proper, but that will make the Union Station neighborhood a primary destination, and one with linkages to a revitalized usable public place on the Los Angeles River? Metro has a long track record of successful real estate development and can accomplish the part of the vision involving its own property. It's the area outside the campus that begs the attention.