Perception is Reality in Downtown

The recent Navy week was a cruel wake up call for San Pedro. Once, San Pedro was a Navy town. We had Todd's ship yard and ships in the harbor. Now, the Navy is worried about the high drug traffic area downtown. This is no shocker unless you are the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce or Los Angeles City Council person or the city planning committee. Surrounded by the projects on one side, and halfway homes on the other downtown has an uphill fight to draw in the higher end clients and out of towners that it wants.

The truth is that downtown is a lot safer than the Navy led. At least it is safe for San Pedran's who know the good times and the bad times to be out and about. However, perception is reality when it keeps out of towners from visiting downtown.

There is some good work being done to bring Marymount College downtown, and to get more events at the Warner. However, unless someone actively addresses the projects and/or the halfway homes downtown will still be fighting an uphill battle.

San Pedro is a compassionate town for motivated people. This is one reason why we have the number of half way homes we have (besides LA dumping them here). But the projects are out of date and too large for our population. San Pedro is a town of about 80,000. We already have more than enough low income housing. Heck, anything below Pacific is low income. There should be a way to update and scale back the projects to better fit our San Pedro community.

I know people want a nice Promenade, but when you have to walk through the projects to get to events there, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that night time events are a non-starter.

Wake up San Pedro. Let us ask our leaders to address the projects. Scale them back and update them to meet the San Pedro community.