Free Republic

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is urging the landowner of a 14-acre urban garden to slash the $16 million sales price. The city seized the land from owner Ralph Horowitz in the 1980s to build a trash-to-energy incinerator, but the project fizzled. Horowitz sued to get the site back and the city eventually sold it back to him for $5 million. He later agreed to sell ten of the 14 acres to the Trust for Public Land for $16 million, but the group raised only $6 million and the purchase option expired Monday. Villaraigosa says Horowitz should sell the property...

Los Angeles -- Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other city officials won't have to testify in a trial challenging the city's sale of a 14-acre garden that was reclaimed by the landowner and bulldozed last week amid protests. The plaintiffs had subpoenaed Villaraigosa and nearly a dozen members of the city council, but Superior Court Judge Helen I. Bendix said she would have to limit the type of questions the urban farmers' lawyers could ask. Attorneys from the two sides agreed Friday not to call the officials to testify. The lawsuit demands that the city get back the land and give...

LAPD and LASD were charged with arresting protesters at the South Central Farms, and it is quickly getting out of hand. Lots of arrestees and requests for units countywide to respond. Vernon PD also requested. 482.8125 CTAC 1 LASD

Los Angeles -- Workers began bulldozing what was once a 14-acre urban garden Wednesday as a group of evicted farmers and their supporters protested the developer's latest move just one week before a judge is scheduled to hear a lawsuit over the sale and ownership of the land. The farmers were evicted three weeks ago after property owner Ralph Horowitz alerted farmers he planned to develop the land. For years, neighborhood residents had farmed the site rent free. One protester Wednesday chained himself to a bulldozer and firefighters were called to cut him loose. Another was arrested for lying in...

Developer Ralph Horowitz is puzzled by all this talk about an offer from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s office to buy his 14 acres at 41st and Alameda streets.. “‘An offer of a proposal’ — I never even heard of that,” Horowitz told the L.A. Weekly. “I don’t know what that means, it has no significance whatsoever.” Villaraigosa, speaking at City Hall just hours after the South Central Farmers had been evicted early Tuesday, somberly told reporters that Horowitz turned down an offer from the Annenberg Foundation and the Trust for Public Land to buy his property for $16.35 million. But there...