October 2012 - Parks & Recreation - 68

Construction for the park, which has yet to receive an official name, broke ground on July 26,
and it's slated to include a number of exciting
components. PlayCore, a national playground
manufacturer, has donated a 4,000-square-foot,
state-of-the-art playground with elements for
adults as well as children of all ages and ability
levels, and a grant from First 5 L.A., a California
state program that provides funds for early childhood development programs, paid for a nature
play garden specially designed for younger children. The site will also include walking trails, traditional wooden play elements, picnic tables, and
sustainable design concepts to minimize its environmental impact and reduce the need for regular maintenance. For this community that has
been advocating for a neighborhood park for half
a century, the anticipated green space couldn't be
more welcome.

Decades in the Making
About 50 years ago, the California Department
of Transportation (known as Caltrans) bought
a property in El Sereno with plans to extend the
I-710 freeway through the neigborhood from the
south. But those plans never materialized, and
about 30 years ago, community members began envisioning a vibrant community park on
the long-neglected lot. However, the land was still
owned by the state and controlled by Caltrans, and
despite plenty of community effort, the neighborhood could never secure the proper approvals and
funding for a park.
In recent years, though, renewed interest in the
project from some inﬂuential individuals with the
support of the community has brought the idea
from a dream to a reality. Through the combined
efforts over the past six years of José Huizar, Los
Angeles City Councilmember for District 14, and
66

Parks & Recreation

| OCTOBER 2012 | WWW.NRPA.ORG

community members including Val Marquez,
founder of the neighborhood advocacy group
Concerned Neighbors of El Sereno, the community was ﬁnally able to secure a 25-year lease
from Caltrans for the property. In January 2010,
Councilmember Huizar contacted The Trust for
Public Land (TPL), a national land conservation
organization, and Program Manager Tori Kjer has
since led TPL's efforts toward gathering funding
for the project and soliciting community input for
the park's design. When NRPA asked the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks if they
would like to cooperate on a Parks Build Community project, El Sereno was their ﬁrst choice.
" The community has been advocating for a
park to be there since way before we got involved, "
Kjer says. " We agreed to facilitate community outreach efforts to pull together a design (to propose
with grant requests for funding). We facilitated a
number of meetings over about six months and
got a really great turnout. People are really excited
about it, and we came up with a design based on
that [community input]. "
In a true effort to accommodate the requests of
those who will be using the park the most, community leaders have turned to neighborhood children for design ideas. " Twelve-year-old kids are
telling me, 'We don't want any gangs, we would
like to have more shade,' " Marquez says. " These
kids are watching this every day, seeing the progress, and they're always asking, 'When is it going
to be open, when can we go in and play?' "

Partners Coming Together
Initial grant requests were hampered by bureaucratic red tape, but the park really started to take
off last November when TPL, in partnership with
the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative, secured
a substantial grant from First 5 L.A. About the

MEETING PHOTO COURTESY OF THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC L AND

ERIC HALEY / THE TRUST FOR PUBLIC L AND

Community organizers
in El Sereno meet to
discuss design plans for
the park.

Construction crews broke ground in
late July and expect to have the park
fully completed by early December.

October 2012 - Parks & Recreation

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