SOUTH GATE, Calif. — The sound of Southeast Los Angeles is what has kept Lourdes Perez dancing for the last 17 years.

“It’s my passion to pass on my culture,” she said in Spanish.

Perez is the founder and president of the Latinas Art Foundation, where she teaches Mexican Folkloric dancing to Southeast LA kids and teens. So when she heard that a state-of-the-art cultural center was going to be built where the Rio Hondo meets the LA River in South Gate by 2024, she felt ecstatic.

The center, born out of the LA River Revitalization Plan and the LA River Master Plan, could provide the community and its kids with access to workshops and classes in music, performing, culinary and visual arts.

“It will help them succeed in the future, and it keeps them off the street,” Perez said.

When kids have access to the arts, a lot of other things improve, from graduation rates to health outcomes, according to the Brookings Institution. However, that’s only if the community gets to enjoy those benefits.

Rossmery Zayas, Southeast LA youth organizer for Communities for a Better Environment, said the $150 million center — designed by Walt Disney Concert Hall Architect Frank Gehry — could instead speed up gentrification.

“We know with development comes a lot of changes that a lot people think are good, but it also makes us very vulnerable to displacement and things like gentrification, which historically have affected communities like ours,” Zayas said. “We have several examples of what that looks like in our communities like Inglewood or Boyle Heights.”

Millions have already been raised for the project, but before even breaking ground, changes are already visible. Just two blocks from where the center would be built is a brand-new luxury building. Rent there starts at $2,300. That’s double the median rent in South Gate, which is $1,200, according to the 2020 Census.

“We know that there are things like rent control on the larger scale, but when it comes to individual cities and communities, not all of them have rent control,” Zayas said. “We definitely have been pushing to have more tenant protections for people who live here, and we are not where we want to be right now.”

But housing experts said that not even existing rent control protections in South Gate will help the three out of five residents that rent, as landlords could sell the buildings to get rid of rent controlled tenants.

Anthony Rendon, 63rd District assemblyman and speaker, has been at the forefront of the project. He said the community has been consulted since day one, from identifying the type of project they wanted to add protections to slow gentrification.

“Things like affordable housing, things like making sure there was public transportation leading to the center — so we included all of those into the plan, and again, those came straight from the community,” Rendon said.

And so is the conundrum of development.

“It’s sad, but it’s also good for our future,” said a cautiously optimistic Perez, who hopes to one day to be able to teach dance classes to her students at the SELA Cultural Center.