What is the Avenue 34 project?

Property developers, going under the names of Pinyon Group and R Cap Avenue 34 LLC, want to build a 468-unit apartment complex at 141 W Avenue 34 in Lincoln Heights, at the corner of W Avenue 34 and Pasadena Avenue. They originally called this “luxury apartments” on their websites, but changed that wording after a public hearing when they realized how opposed to this project many people in the neighborhood were. There will be 67 “affordable” apartments, but even those will be rented through a City program at a rate that is higher than the average rent in Lincoln Heights, and to people who make more money than the average Lincoln Heights resident. This project is a luxury apartment building by Lincoln Heights standards.

The project will consist of three buildings, at four and five stories high, taking up an entire 5-acre property. There will be three commercial spaces occupying 16,000 square feet. The project is predicted to produce 2,026 new car trips every day on this block.

The property is highly contaminated with over a dozen toxic chemicals in the soil, groundwater, and soil vapor. These toxins include PCE, TCE, hexavalent chromium, lead, mercury, arsenic, vinyl chloride, petroleum hydrocarbons, and more. The property was used until the mid-1980s as an illegal toxic waste dump. The site was also formerly used as a plastics manufacturer, an electronics factory, a gravel company, a steel company, and it is next door to an abandoned property called Welch’s, an industrial dry cleaner that polluted this block for as long as 70 years. This is in a residential neighborhood, and across the street from Hillside Elementary School.

The developers lied for over a year, saying they had tested the site to prove it was clean. We fought hard to compel the Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) to require testing. That testing proved that the site is a danger to future residents as well as to the surrounding community. Unfortunately, DTSC is poised to approve a dangerously inadequate cleanup plan that would leave much of the contamination in the ground, and would not clean the site to federal residential safety standards. DTSC and the developers have no plans to investigate the risks potential offsite contamination could pose to neighboring residents, workers, and schoolchildren.