On this magnificent day when the final link in the light rail network – from Culver City to Santa Monica – officially opens, did you think you would outlive history and experience such a moment?
Can you believe four years have slipped away since Culver City’s light rail station was born?
Alternative transportation, as the phrase goes, is reality, no longer a vision.
What is the more amazing is the seamless manner in which light rail became an instant fixture. No shakedown period. It immediately morphed into our daily routines.
This is Stage 1.
Stage 2 will be much more elaborate because it is Culver City-centric.
Several more years will be written before the grand plans for the Washington-National axis grow the modest light rail neighborhood into a spectacular showplace, a dazzlingly mature upscale development, commercially and residentially.
Remember the argumentative Monday nights at City Council meetings a dozen years ago, starring Alan Corlin, Gary Silbiger, Steve Rose, Carol Gross.
The Council met every week in those days.
One of the longest running debates was whether the Expo Station, as it has come to be known, should be elevated or at ground level.
Billed exclusively as the Culver City-to-Santa Monica link, as if the rails only worked in one direction, Mr. Rose lightheartedly played contrarian this morning.
“I am glad to see people can come from Santa Monica to Culver City,” said the CEO/President of the Chamber of Commerce.
History was on his mind.
Nearly 70 years after the death of Culver City’s Founding Father and 60 years after rail in Los Angeles was speeding toward the cemetery, Mr. Rose said:
“This is another leg of Harry Culver’s statement that ‘all roads lead to Culver City.’”
Why is opening the link to the ocean healthy for Culver City?
“Without the light rail,” Mr. Rose said, “the Washington-National district would remain a non-economical, viable intersection where warehouses, a dilapidated motel, an adult film theatre and an old gas station used to be.
“Today, it is becoming the site of the light rail, 200 apartments, a 145-unit four-star hotel called The Ivy, and a very upscale shopping destination, The Platform.
“Hopefully,” said Mr. Rose, “these developments will allow employees of the Helms District and the Hayden Tract to take alternative forms of transportation.”
Returning to historic mode, he said that as the light rail cars hum away toward Santa Monica, we should recall what was and what will be. “Ten years ago,” he said, “what will be The Platform housed three or four different car dealerships. Now it is going to be an upscale shopping experience.
“This demonstrates the evolution of the economy and the shopping experience of Culver City.”
