XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.los-angeles, alt.society.liberalism
XPost: talk.politics.guns

Tear this shithole city slumlord building down before it falls
down.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Friday to allow
the demolition of a century-old building in the Westlake
neighborhood that served as a Jewish landmark and later as the
heart of labor organizing in the city.

The vote was a victory for Catholic Charities, which bought the
building historically known as the B’nai B’rith Lodge in 2018
but later said it was “seriously dilapidated and structurally
unsound” and could threaten the safety of the surrounding
neighborhood.

Catholic Charities, a nonprofit organization connected to the
Archdiocese of Los Angeles, filed a lawsuit against the city in
2023, saying it had wrongly been denied permission to tear down
the ornate 1924 structure.

The group said in court documents that the city would not allow
demolition of the property on South Union Avenue because it “may
be historic,” making it subject to further additional review, as
well as because any future projects on the lot must comply with
the California Environmental Quality Act.

Community preservationists and advocates argued that a potential
demolition would be a blow to crucial L.A. history. Instead,
they urged Catholic Charities to repair the building and put it
to use.

The Rev. Dylan Littlefield, the chaplain at the Cecil Hotel who
has become involved in preservation battles, said the lodge’s
demolition would mean the destruction of a place that stood as a
“testament to the resiliency and the diversity of the city of
Los Angeles.”

Esotouric, a tour company that advocates for historic
preservation and public policy, told The Times before the
settlement vote was announced that the public should have a
chance to comment. The company called the lawsuit — and any
prospective settlement — a potential “land-use decision about
the right to demolish a cultural resource.”

The city attorney’s office declined to comment, citing the
pending litigation.

The B’Nai B’rith lodge was designed by the famed Jewish
architect Samuel Tilden Norton, who also designed the Wilshire
Boulevard Temple.

It was built in the early 1920s as the home for an L.A. chapter
of the B’nai B’rith, a Jewish service organization with New York
roots. At the time, members of the B’nai B’rith felt a “desire
to really be accepted by the leaders of the city,” according to
Steven Luftman, a heritage conservation consultant.

“They felt that if they only built a grand enough meeting hall,
that that would be one step toward being recognized as part of
the community,” said Luftman, who wrote an application for the
lodge to be deemed a historic-cultural monument.

After a few years of being a community hub for Jewish L.A., the
building was sold in 1930 to the Fraternal Order of Eagles. It
then had a brief tenure as clubhouse for the Safeway Employees’
Assn. before it became the headquarters of the American
Federation of Labor Teamsters Joint Council 42.

It became the site for rapid growth of the labor movement, and
is where the Teamsters elected their first Black official, John
T. Williams, according to Luftman.

“The AFL Teamster building was the heart of the Los Angeles
labor movement and ground zero for much of the union organizing
that transformed Los Angeles into a metropolitan powerhouse,”
said Chris Griswold, Teamsters Joint Council 42 president.

B’nai B’rith International said in a statement that the lodge
“represents an important part of the history of our organization
in Los Angeles.”

“However this is resolved, it would be important to the history
of Los Angeles Jewry to note that B’nai B’rith met there,” the
statement said.

Catholic Charities and the archdiocese respect the building’s
history and “have been in communication with both the Jewish
community and labor leaders throughout this process,” the
religious groups said in a joint statement. “Our concern has
always been the safety of the dilapidated property and well-
being of our neighborhood.”

In the lawsuit, Catholic Charities said it has no projects
planned for the lot, and stressed that its intention is to
simply demolish the lodge.

“Catholic Charities incurs ongoing costs of hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year to maintain and secure the building,
which is vacant, deteriorated and unstable,” the court document
read. “These funds are being diverted from critical programs to
help disadvantaged communities.”

The groups said their hope was to “work with the community and
the council office to eventually find a use for the property
consistent with Catholic Charities’ mission, such as community
food service, an emergency shelter, transitional youth housing,
before and after school care, and older adult services.”

Littlefield, the chaplain at the Cecil Hotel, said Catholic
Charities’ rationale was “just an excuse to justify their desire
to tear the building down.”

“The building itself could be a place of empowerment,”
Littlefield said. “The building itself could be a place where
more movements like this takeoff, where more great things
happen, where more lives are saved and changed.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-08/bnai-brith-
demolition

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