It looks more and more like the end for Parker Center, the city’s former police headquarters, which has stood as a monument to both the missteps and the forward-thinking history of the department.
The City Council voted Tuesday to deny a cultural-historic landmark application for the eight-story building that was home base for the LAPD from 1954 until 2009, setting the city up to more seriously consider a proposal by the Bureau of Engineering to demolish and replace the building.
The designation was strongly opposed by members of the Little Tokyo community, who argued that the building took over a once vibrant part of their neighborhood, where many Japanese-Americans recently returning from internment during World War II had been trying to rebuild their businesses and lives. Parker Center also stood as a physical barrier to City Hall and the rest of the civic center, and had its back facing the Little Tokyo community, they said.
• RELATED STORY: LA City Council committee opposes historic designation for Parker Center
Preservationists who sought to keep at least a part of the building, said it offers a complex and uncomfortable historical lesson that has value today, due to its role in the department’s mistreatment of African American and Latino residents, as well as some the gains in efficiency in policing work that occurred while the building was in use. The design of Parker Center is also the work of noted architect Welton Becket, who is also responsible for the look of the Music Center and the Capitol Records building.
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