Scouts
From page A1
…Utah and Nevada, said the Hines and Mitchell.
“If they take the base, where will the kids go?” Hines asked. “Kids have to do something. If they build the marina I’m going to recommend they take the profits and build a couple more juvenile halls, because they’re going to need them.”
Pete Mandia, the Harbor Department’s marina project manager, denies there will be any adverse impact on children if the marina and its recreation area are constructed.
“The Scout camp will be relocated to another area of the West Channel with beach frontage and of comparable size to the area they have now,” he said.
The Board of Harbor Commissioners has made it clear it is committed to providing an overnight camp site in the marina’s recreation area, and it will likely be larger than the site at the camp, he said.
Mandia said plans call for the camp to be shifted north to an area now occupied by Fort MacArthur’s Lower Reservation, with 12 acres devoted to camping and 20 to recreating, including a launch and beach frontage for small boats. Some slips also would be made available to the Scouts, he said.
Mandia said how to allocate time and space to the scores of organizations that would want to use the area is a major problem now being pondered.
Hines and Mitchell also said the Harbor Department ignored the offer of a corporation to spend $300.000 upgrading the Scout camp if a long-term leavse for the land could be obtained.
Bert Keller, director of support services for the Los Angeles Area Council, said the offer was made a year ago by Hone Savings and Loan Association.
“This is the only facility and campground of its type in Los Angeles County that inner-city kids can reach via public transportation,” said Ken Steindler, a San Pedro attorney and Scout member who has talked with Harbor Department officials on behalf of the Scouts.
Mandia said he had heard rumors about the offer, “But there have been no formal contracts that I’m aware of. I feel certain if there had been I would know about it.”
He said the department has been soliciting public and private agencies and organizations to share in the cost of financing the marina project, and would welcome such an offer.
Mandia said any youth organization or its representatives entering into such an arrangement could feel secure and be assured of a lease long enough to permit them to recoup their investment.
Steindler said neither the Scouts nor the Harbor Department was unwilling to negotiate, and the Scouts’ reaction to department plans would depend on what they were offered.
The Scouts’ position is that they have had the base since the 1930s, he said, and have held it as a public trust for all youth groups.
He said the Scout base is the only available still water beach in the county from which boats can be launched safely.
Mrs. Hines said she wonders if the new location would be as safe with the addition of many pleasure craft in the area.
“There are thousands of boats there now,” Mandia said, “and the addition of 900 more will not cause great congestion.”
He said the West Channel has always been the site of much boating activity, and the proposed camp site will be just as good or better than the current location.
Steindler said the $1 million to $1.5 million the Harbor Department stands to make annually on the marina is not enough to justify displacing the 12,000 persons, mostly children, who use the Scout base.
“We should stop taking things away from children,” he said. “I’m a lawyer, I see the bad ones in juvenile court. If the Scout base helps save just one of them, it’s worth the money.”
Mandia said as plans now stand, the Scout base would likely become the site of the marina administration building and a chandlery.
Keywords: Bert Keller, Cabrilloa Beach Youth Waterfront Sports Park, California, Camps, Councils, Fort MacArthur, Jeff Mitchell, Joseph A. Hines, Ken Steindler, Los Angeles Area Council, Pete Mandia, San Pedro Harbor West Channel, Scouting
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