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Awash in soothing shades of cool pastels, the new four-story North Hospital at Kaiser Permanente in Harbor City doesn’t look much like hospitals from earlier decades.

The long-anticipated new building at Normandie Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway is set to open in February after nearly three years of construction. It will replace the old hospital building, constructed in the late 1950s, that stands next to the new tower and will come down over the next year to make room for more parking.

Spurred on by state mandates that have increased seismic standards, along with a need to upgrade technology, the new building is part of an overall campus improvement project at Kaiser Permanente South Bay that is expected to cost about $440 million. Included are new outdoor park spaces, more parking and state-of-the-art medical services.

“Our members’ expectations are changing,” Chief Operating Officer Yvonne Rockwood said during a tour of the new facilities. “They expect the one-person (private) rooms, and they expect the technology.”

The new seismic standards forced hospitals to decide whether to replace or retrofit facilities. In many cases, new construction provided the less costly option, especially when other upgrades were needed anyway.

The new hospital features an expanded 24-hour emergency room with 39 private treatment areas, 140 private patient rooms, a state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging suite (including a digital breast center), the Wave Cafe with indoor and outdoor patio seating, and “room service-style meals” for patients with food made daily by Executive Chef Mitchel Ramos, of the Fig & Olive restaurant in Los Angeles, and his team of cooks.

“Everything in this hospital — from the nurses’ stations to meal service — has been patient-centered in its design,” said Dr. Barbara Carnes, area medical director.

Built to LEED Gold environmental standards, the 280,000-square-foot complex also includes a healing garden and Wi-Fi access for patients and visitors.

Floors are rubberized to provide easier working conditions for medical staff. Nurses’ stations are less centralized, giving staff better eye contact with rooms.

Signs are bilingual and hospital officials are especially trying to spread the word that the ER entrance will now be on Pacific Coast Highway, not at the back of the campus as before.

A surf-and-ocean theme is highlighted throughout the building, with wave, sand, whale and historic images from around the Port of Los Angeles and local beaches displayed on walls and etched into glass.

Specialty services will include an intensive care unit, inpatient dialysis, respiratory services, physical therapy and a bariatric unit with a surgery center.

In addition to meeting seismic standards, the new construction will help with demand, which is expected to grow now that health insurance is mandatory.

Kaiser Permanente South Bay, which is across the street from Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park and Machado Lake, is bordered by Pacific Coast Highway, Normandie Avenue and Vermont Avenue.

It’s the latest construction project to be completed by Kaiser.

In June 2013, a new three-story Kaiser facility was opened in Carson to improve its reach to nearly 200,000 members in the South Bay, Harbor Area and Long Beach.

The 180,000-square-foot Carson building — at 18600 S. Figueroa St. where offices of Nissan North America were — features a state-of-the-art dermatology department and an occupational health wing for those with work-related injuries.

Kaiser Permanente came to the Harbor Area in 1950 to serve longshoremen and their families, who still make up a good portion of the providers’ members.

A firm opening date hasn’t been announced and there is still plenty of work ahead, including transitioning patients and staff. Overseeing that will be Sherry Bearden, who also will direct practice drills as the transition draws closer.

Head south down Vermont Avenue past Kenneth Malloy Harbor Regional Park, and you’ll soon reach a crossroads that gives you options. Lots of options.

Make a hard right onto Anaheim Street and you’ll continue through Harbor City, headed for Lomita and Torrance. Bear right more gently and Palos Verdes Drive North will take you up onto the Peninsula. Bear slightly left and you’ll find yourself on San Pedro’s main drag, Gaffey Street. Finally, a hard left sends you the other way down Anaheim toward Wilmington and Long Beach.

Welcome to Five Points, one of the South Bay/Harbor Area’s wackiest intersections.

Archaeological and historical evidence suggests that a large Native American settlement once was situated near the Five Points intersection, and that the area once was a crossing for several major trails used by coastal Shoshonean tribes.

Hopefully, they had fewer gnarly traffic crashes there than did subsequent settlers.

Because of its harbor, San Pedro was among the earliest settlements in the Harbor Area, incorporating in 1888. (It disincorporated itself and became part of the city of Los Angeles in 1909.) Other smaller settlements began cropping up north of San Pedro and south of L.A., but for several decades those areas mostly consisted of farmland.

As Los Angeles Harbor development ramped up in the early 1900s, the need for roads connecting the port and its goods to points north became obvious. Of course, it went both ways, with port workers from cities such as Torrance in need of connection to San Pedro using eastside thoroughfares, such as Western and Vermont avenues

Developing this highway infrastructure that we take for granted today took time.

The last link connecting Western Avenue from Torrance to San Pedro wasn’t finished until 1950. By contrast, the Southern Pacific freight railroad link to San Pedro came early on, in 1881. The Pacific Electric red car began bringing passengers to the port in 1904.

Anaheim Street had been established as an east-west artery between Long Beach and Wilmington in the 1880s. Vermont and Normandie were extensions of major north-south Los Angeles arteries. Palos Verdes Drive North came into the picture with the development of the Palos Verdes Peninsula during the mid-1920s.

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Anaheim St. traffic headed west passes through Five Points intersection, center, as Vermont Ave. traffic waits, left. Palos Verdes Drive North is beyond red traffic lights at right, while Gaffey St. lies beyond more distant traffic signals, center. August 2022. (Photo by Sam Gnerre)

These various planned thoroughfares didn’t start coming together in organized chaos until a series of construction projects received approval in 1929 and began in 1930. These included extending Gaffey Street from Channel Street up north to Anaheim Street and building Normandie and Vermont avenues south from 228th Street to Anaheim.

Work began on paving the Gaffey Street extension from Channel Street north to Anaheim in June 1930 and was completed that September.

North of Anaheim, the plan was for Normandie to veer east and merge into Vermont just north of Anaheim Street. But both had to be extended a considerable distance south first.

San Pedro businessman and land baron George Peck helped out on the extension northward in 1931 by deeding the right-of-way on the land he owned through which the expansion would run.

Traffic was a mess during all this construction, as one might imagine, with some sections of the roads involved, especially Anaheim, being closed for weeks at a time. But with the completion of its extension in July 1932, Vermont Avenue became the first continuous roadway connecting San Pedro to Los Angeles.

The fifth and final of the Five Points, the extension of Palos Verdes Drive North from the Peninsula eastward to link to the intersection, was approved in 1932 and completed in 1934.

It was all well and good for San Pedro to announce in 1936 the installation of a new “Welcome to San Pedro” sign at the gateway intersection. But once construction there was completed, it quickly became clear that traffic controls were what really were needed.

Crashes at the confusing intersection became commonplace.

In 1932, stop signs were installed at Gaffey and Anaheim. Improved lighting was added in 1936 to the formerly dark-at-night intersection, and there was much talk of improving safety there over the next few years.

Somehow, though, traffic signals weren’t installed until the U.S. Army demanded them in late 1943 to protect troops and defense workers trying to safely navigate the crossing. They became operational in January 1944 and seemed to help reduce crashes somewhat.

More attempts to improve the intersection came after the war.

The addition of a nearby bridge on Anaheim and new storm drains were aimed at reducing the flooding from nearby Bixby Slough that occurred at the intersection during rainy weather. Gaffey and Anaheim streets also were widened in 1946 to accommodate the heavy traffic in the area.

Improvements to the difficult traffic problems posed by the converging roadways have continued throughout the years.

The whole intersection might have been altered radically if a 1965 proposal for a coastal freeway through the South Bay had been adopted. The preferred route would have followed Anaheim Street right through the Five Points intersection. It was debated for several years, but the freeway idea was put to rest in the early 1970s.

From time to time, other proposals to improve traffic have been made. The idea of a roundabout, or traffic circle, similar to the Lakewood Boulevard roundabout in Long Beach has been tossed around for years. Detractors have said the Five Points site is too small for one and roundabouts, in general, pose unnecessarily dangerous traffic risks.

For now, Five Points remains a souped up, frequently redesigned, update of the traffic puzzle that first bedeviled traffic engineers – and drivers – in 1934.

Sources: Daily Breeze archives. Los Angeles Times archives. San Pedro: A Pictorial History, by Henry P. Silka, San Pedro Bay Historical Society, 1993. San Pedro News Pilot archives. Torrance Press Herald archives.

Note: Thanks to reader Angel Rodriguez for suggesting this topic.

HARBOR CITY, Calif. (WKRC/KCAL/KCBS/CNN Newsource) - A young girl in California was brutally beaten by an adult woman inside a McDonald's. The attack was caught on camera.

Caught on camera: 13-year-old brutally attacked by woman in McDonald's< > (KCAL/KCBS, Angelina Gray, CNN/CNN Newsource)

On Sep. 6, 13-year-old Kassidy Jones stopped at the restaurant with two classmates on her way home from school. She says when she came out of the bathroom, the woman immediately made eye contact and cornered her.

"She was like, 'What the F are you looking at? I fight kids, I 'll fight you,'" Jones recalled. "I said, 'Can you get your hand out of my face?' She moves it closer. That's when I go like this [raised an arm to block], and then she grabs me, starts manhandling me, and I didnt do anything to her."

The eighth-grader says she asked the attacker to let go, but she only tightened her grip.

"The only way I got her to let go of me was to hit her, and that's when she started punching me in my face. She was grabbing me by my hair and she yanked me to the floor, swung me like a rag doll," Jones said.

A man who appeared to be with the woman then pulled her away from Jones -- who was left with cuts, bruises, and facial swelling -- and they left.

"It was all about surviving and making sure I was not injured in the worst way possible," Jones said. "It was very horrific, very bad."

Angelina Gray, Jones' mother, says it broke her heart to see her daughter, a 4.0 honor roll student, beaten so severely.

"I could not believe it," said Gray. "I'm thinking it had to be an animal that would hurt a 13-year-old, someone mentally disturbed."

The mother says she's outraged and hopes someone will be able to identify the woman in the video so she can be brought to justice.

"She should go to jail, lose her children, lose her job, as well," Gray said. "If anyone knows this lady, please turn her in."

Police say no arrests have been made so far, but that the assailant will face child abuse and battery charges.

"I would just ask her why. That's it," said Jones. "There is no excuse for what she did."

Encampment residents were not offered shelter or storage for their belongings, and endured weeks of uncertainty and fear.

For several weeks, an encampment of unhoused residents located in Harbor City has endured fence repair, leading to daily threats of sweeps. Encampment residents shared their frustration and confusion with Knock LA, and most reported not being provided any offer of shelter beds or storage for their belongings.

The encampment has existed in its current iteration for several years, and many of the residents arrived there after leaving from a nearby area called “the tracks,” located in a field nearby on land owned by the County of Los Angeles. Residents told Knock LA they were informed they could move to their current location by LA County officials.

After the community moved, members ran into numerous new hardships and battles with CD 15 Councilmember Joe Buscaino’s office, as well as the LAPD. Many residents of the encampment have lived unhoused in the area for several years.

Advocates for unhoused people often run afoul of employees of Councilmember Buscaino’s office, even as Buscaino has attempted to make his strategy on encampment clearing a cornerstone of his mayoral run.

Knock LA has witnessed tense exchanges between advocates and unhoused residents with CD 15 employees and LA Sanitation. There have even been several arrests made by the LAPD over the past year during what the city calls “major cleaning” operations. [Ed. Disclosure: Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, the author of this article, was arrested in July 2021 while covering a “comprehensive cleanup” at this Harbor City encampment. The charges against Sean were dropped in October 2021.]

Despite the CDC having strongly advised unhoused people to “remain where they are” during the COVID-19 pandemic if no individual housing options are available, the Harbor City encampment was the first to experience what residents often call sweeps and the city calls “comprehensive cleanups,” after a brief moratorium in 2021. Buscaino even lobbied to “fast-track” bringing back comprehensive cleanups in his district while other councilmembers wanted to move more slowly during the pandemic.

Buscaino’s team has, on at least two occasions, lied about the number of encampment residents living in CD 15, while claiming his strategy is effective. There was even an incident where an advocate for unhoused people was shoved by Buscaino’s senior adviser during a press event.

The night before the fence repair began, Knock LA talked to a resident of the encampment who goes by Tan. Tan has been at this encampment for three years, and had previously spent five years at the tracks.

Taking drop-offs of cans and bottles using a hand-painted sign, Tan makes his living by recycling cans and spending some time with a sign near an overpass asking for donations. He said that people leave cans for him to take to a recycling facility and food donations early in the morning. Mentioning he was unsure how he could receive the donations of cans if he moved for two weeks, Tan said he was concerned with losing that income.

Sharing his chores for the day — crushing and processing cans for recycling, charging his phone, purchasing food from the grocery store, getting new batteries every few days, and other tasks — Tan told Knock LA that they all become more difficult on days he has to move all of his belongings during sweeps.

Shadow, who has lived at the encampment for several years, described services promised but never delivered — or later taken away. “They scattered us all out, and everything’s changed since then. Everything’s gone bad since then.” A local business owner provided a dumpster to the encampment after several months of residents not having enough dumpster space and occasionally no dumpster at all.

Shadow told Knock LA, “our trash builds up and we don’t have anywhere to put it, then they target us for the trash.” Shadow questioned the city’s response and the conditions in the camp, saying “we’re not getting electricity, we’re not getting water, we’re not getting to use the bathrooms. And they’re leaving us like that. I don’t understand that.”

Many residents acknowledge how difficult the area is for an encampment, but while describing the difficulties, they stress that the area is the best option available. The encampment runs alongside a dirt road, and often the dirt gets kicked up by weather and nearby trucks. Portable restrooms on the nearby LA County land were filled with feces after not being cleaned for months, while the portable restrooms at the current encampment location were removed in late 2021.

One resident, situated alongside a busy street, was hit by a vehicle in August 2021 and required hospitalization. Tan told Knock LA of noise level concerns for encampment residents, saying, “I swear to god every hour there’s got to be at least three or four emergency vehicles with their sirens passing by your tent with that high pitched screeching noise.”

Before fencing construction began, signs were posted giving notice of major cleanings for two consecutive days, despite the encampment having been “cleaned” twice the week before. Conflicting information from multiple city and county agencies compounded anxiety and misunderstandings: some residents reported that employees of Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) informed them that the area might be fenced off completely.

A flyer titled “Fence Replacement Project” was handed to one unhoused resident, showing a map of the fence bordering the encampment and describing a three-week repair period. Residents reported they were told by an LAPD officer that they should relocate to a street corner nearby, and most did so in the night before the cleanups began.

As the comprehensive cleanups began on Monday, CD 15 Field Deputy Caitlin Muldoon was present to watch the operation. At least a dozen city vehicles arrived for the sweep. LAHSA officials were present, but told at least two of the unhoused residents that there were no beds available for temporary shelter.

Once one side of the encampment began getting taped off, a group of unhoused advocates requested to speak with Muldoon, who confirmed that the project would last two weeks. After being asked why the area had undergone two sweeps just the week before and were scheduled for two more, Muldoon told the group that CD 15 was informed that “this is for a construction project for all of this fencing that’s going to be replaced.”

She told the group that “there has been continuous outreach out here. Continuous. So unfortunately all of the beds as of this week are full.” She later told the group that “we have to have this project completed. Because as of now the supplies are available, the crew is available.” She did clarify that the encampment residents could return after business hours every day, but did not offer solutions to the group as to how the residents could move personal belongings and tents every day.

During the impromptu discussion, advocates voiced dissatisfaction with the City, as well as Muldoon. An unhoused advocate said “a fence is more important than the lives of the people who are living here who you’re evicting temporarily, [and] who have nowhere to stay?” Another advocate told Muldoon that the residents were “much less safe” on the nearby residential street where they were relocated to for the upcoming weeks. One advocate joked that he could repair the fence more quickly and cheaply on his own.

At various points during the discussion, Muldoon ordered the group to stop yelling at her — though the group did not appear to be louder than was necessary given equipment in operation nearby.

Knock LA asked Muldoon what the outreach from LAHSA entailed, given that they don’t currently have beds available. She told the reporter that it was “informing them of the construction,” and that it was “so they can relocate.” Despite both LAHSA supervisors and CD 15 employees stating to residents that there were no beds available at the beginning of the operation, a large cadre of LAHSA workers arrived and began telling residents that “one spot was available, but they’d need to hurry.”

As Knock LA was interviewing residents of the encampment, a third “Notice of Major Cleaning” for Wednesday, April 6, 2022, was posted by an LA Sanitation employee. An advocate for unhoused residents sent Knock LA pictures of such notices, which have been functionally continuous since the fencing project began.

Councilmember Buscaino and his office did not respond to calls or requests for follow-up comments to Knock LA for this story. LAHSA employees on site referred Knock LA to their offices, which did not respond to requests for follow-up for this story.

As residents of the encampment attempted to make sense of the situation after crews started work, they told Knock LA about their frustrations with the new area and the difficulty of living in an encampment in CD 15.

One resident, who asked to go by W, said, “Got me walking up and down these streets? It’s like we are in Apocalypse Now or something. …Broken knees, broken legs, hit in the head with a bat, hit in the head with a 2×4, DOA, ear bitten off. What the fuck is y’all waiting on?”

Shadow told Knock LA, “We’re not bad people, we may have all made some bad choices. But nonetheless we’re all American citizens; we buy shit, and we are paying taxes on everything that we buy.” He called the situation in Harbor City a human rights violation.

By Steven Guzman, Editorial Intern

If the grand opening of a new skate park in Harbor City proves anything, it’s that persistence pays off and that anyone, at any age, can directly impact their community.

“Age is nothing but a number,” Richard “Richie” Ortiz said. “It just depends on your persistence.”

Ortiz is a member of the CA$H Skate Crew, a group of Harbor City youth skaters who led the effort to build a skate park in its community.

“As long as you stay persistent and you really stay consistent to achieve what you’ve got to achieve, nobody can deny you,” Ortiz said.

The idea for the skate park began germinating in the minds of these young adults while they were still in middle school.

“It’s been an idea for the longest,” Emilio Otero Jr. said.

Otero, 19, is one of the youngest members of the Harbor City Neighborhood Council.

“When we were young we were doing it; going to these meetings, [but] nothing was being done, you know?” Otero said.

As children, Ortiz, Otero and their friends would attend the Harbor City Neighborhood Council meetings religiously. They made direct requests for a skate park from their neighborhood council representatives. They created petitions, walked their neighborhoods and knocked on doors collecting signatures for a skate park, trying to convince anyone who would listen.

“When we were young we wanted it to be for ourselves, as little kids,” Ortiz said. “But [eventually,] we kinda look[ed] at it as, ‘This isn’t just for us; this is for our futures; this is for our community and with this skate park we can save a lot of lives.’”

However, their initial attempts to drum up support for a skatepark within city government failed. Their voices were disregarded or brushed aside.

“When you’re doing something as little kids, do you really expect someone of a high stature to really believe you or take you seriously?” Ortiz said. “They kinda push you off like, ‘Sure kid it’ll happen.’”

Nothing happened for six or seven years, but when Otero graduated from Sunburst Youth Academy, he was still itching to make his dream a reality.

“So, I got out of Sunburst and was like, ‘Fuck it, let’s do this again,’” Otero said. “I got all my friends together and we went out to the [neighborhood council] meeting and spoke up.”

It was at this meeting that they finally got the break they had needed. Tim Tucker and Howard Scott Jr., cofounder of the City Lights Gateway Foundation and respected music producer, happened to be in attendance.

“Mr. Scott was there…,” Otero said. “Later on … we were all outside that day chilling, skating, and then Howard Scott and Tim Tucker, they come up to us and they asked us, ‘You all really want a skate park?’ We tell them, ‘Yes, we do.’ [They’re] like, ‘Alright, it’s not going to be easy, but we’re going to do this.’”

From that moment on, the CA$H Skate Crew’s dream of a skate park in their community steamrolled. With help from Scott, Tucker and the City Lights Gateway Foundation, the city found money within its budget for the construction of the project. The total estimate for the construction of the skate park was around $650,000 and it would be designed, not by a third party, but by the CA$H skate crew itself. In total, $700,000 was available — $300,000 from the city, as well as from Quimby Act funds set aside for local park and recreation purposes. The final $400,000 was donated anonymously.

For Scott, who was born and reared in Harbor City, this was the exact opportunity he was looking for to give back to the community that saw him grow.

“I was looking for the same thing for young kids that the longshoremen Local 13 did for older guys in the community [who] didn’t get along,” Scott said. “They hated each other back in the day. But then they became longshoremen. How did all of that anger eradicate? What I found out was that it was more important for them to take care of their families and make money, and be part of Local 13, as opposed to be(ing) part of local bullshit.

“What we were looking for is the same thing with these young kids, to find them a Local 13, something that they were unified in, [where] it didn’t matter where they were from [and] that it would allow them to be ambassadors for the youth in that way…. Skating just happened to be their Local 13.”

During the time Scott and Tucker spent alongside the CA$H skate crew, Otero and another member, Armando Micro II, heard as an off-hand comment from their mentors that the Harbor City Neighborhood Council was about to have its elections and that seats would be open. From there, as Otero succinctly puts it, “We nominated ourselves for election.”

Not only did Otero and Micro run for the Harbor City Neighborhood Council, but they won. “We got over 200 votes,” Otero said. “For me and Mando, from a lot of people … everyone knew what we were doing. They were so psyched that we were actually doing it because of how young we are.”

“We were thinking about it, [about] how we wanted to have a say about what happens in our city,” Micro said. “It’s what we’ve been wanting for so long and now we had a chance to be able to do that. So, we took advantage of that.”

On June 21, Los Angeles District 15 Councilman Joe Buscaino and the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks joined Scott, Tucker and the CA$H Skate Crew at the grand opening of their dream skate park. During the celebration, Otero made a short speech in which he brought up the entire CA$H Skate Crew to bask in their achievement.

“What we’re doing is a reconstruction of the whole mindset of this youth base, if they’re out here doing positive things like this and nobody is dying, then our mission is complete, Tucker said.

Otero and Micro both run the Ad Hoc Committee on Homelessness and the Youth Committee. The CA$H Skate Crew is looking to build on its momentum. If you ask them why they do what they do for their community they’ll probably tell you it’s all about what CA$H stands for: “Cuz All Skaters Hustle.”