Location:  Los Angeles, California

Client:  Young Nak Church & STADCO Broadway Company

The River Town plan for a neighborhood of northeast Los Angeles envisions a new mixed use community in the place of an outdated industrial district between the Los Angeles River and the Golden State Freeway. Focused at its core on approximately 27 acres owned by a consortium of private owners of, River Town proposes a neighborhood with a balance of jobs and housing, accessible open space, neighborhood parks, festive plazas, retail and community services, and a sensitive relationship with the existing environment and communities.

The plan for these properties is integrally tied to public planning processes currently underway and other policies recently adopted that include the Cornfield Arroyo Seco Specific Plan (the City’s emerging plan to guide development in the area from Chinatown north to the Pasadena Freeway), as well as the Northeast Community Plan Update, the Los Angeles River Improvement Overlay, and Industrial Land Use Policy studies. The intensity of interest in the area speaks to the strong prospect that it is poised to receive the city’s next wave of urban growth. The plan supports a series of new City initiatives geared toward absorbing that future growth while maintaining local businesses and existing uses for the community. Prepared for private owners, the plan plays a reflexive role with the City’s emerging policy framework: informed by public policies and studies, in collaboration with the City it provided supporting information and ideas to the City’s ongoing planning efforts.