Many Bridges to Cross to Revive L.A. River

San Antonio’s River Walk is nationally famous. The East River affords boat tours with fabulous views of the New York skyline.

Los Angeles, with its mostly dry, concrete-lined Los Angeles River, has allowed enduring unsightliness over most of the waterway’s 58-mile length. Only a few places offer relief from the dreariness.

But that may be changing. In at least five places along the river, beautification is either underway or proposed. Five members of the Los Angeles City Council have formed an ad hoc committee to expedite developments. Long Beach is gathering funds for a park along its nine-mile stretch of the river.

Among the salient advances or proposals are these:

* Along a quarter-mile stretch in a Sherman Oaks neighborhood, where Fulton Avenue crosses the river, residents on their own are expanding a flower garden they began constructing after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Village Gardeners of the Los Angeles River raise $50 to $80 a month to pay for the watering.

* Last month, the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, a state agency that distributes funds from bond issues, gave $5 million to Long Beach to buy 20 acres of land in the Wrigley Heights section, part of an elaborate 10-year plan to develop a recreational strip along the river. The conservancy also has given $850,000 to Long Beach to start connecting Cesar Chavez Park to the Drake Greenbelt at another point along the river.

* The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy gave the Harvard Graduate School of Design $100,000 to do two reports on possible development of the planned Taylor Yard and Cornfield state parks between Glendale and downtown Los Angeles. The second report was presented last month. Both constitute elaborate scenarios for widening the riverbed, replacing concrete banks that have begun to crumble, and possibly creating lakes surrounded by residential high-rises.

* An artist, Lane Barden, has proposed construction of a dam, deflatable during the wet season, that would back up the river into a mile-long waterway between Spring Street and the southern end of Taylor Yard. The backup, Barden says, would take only 24 hours, after an hourlong inflation of the dam. He puts the price of his project at $20 million to $25 million.

Could Take 20 Years

Altogether, said Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, it may take 20 years to acquire the funding to provide a greenbelt from Glendale through downtown Los Angeles to Interstate 10. The goal: to replace the mountains of landfill and trash and industrial land crisscrossed by railway tracks.

Though the fund-raising will take time, “we can see the end” of the river being bordered by unadorned industrial property, Edmiston said.

Farther south, he said, “there’s going to be a project to increase the parapet along the river. When that happens, it’s going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and we need to be ready with other plans. The river is not going to stay the same.”

His views were echoed by Los Angeles City Councilman Ed Reyes, a member of the council’s ad hoc committee on the river:

“The upcoming parks at Taylor Yard and Cornfield will begin to realize the potential of the Los Angeles River and what it can do for the adjacent long-overlooked neighborhoods. We’re changing the way we view the river, treating it like our frontyard instead of our backyard.”

Mia Lehrer, a landscape architect who supervised the Harvard design students who studied the river, said, “We’re thinking big. You can take out the concrete. Boston and New York have done it.”

One possible funding mechanism offered by Lehrer would be an expansion of the state’s Quimby Act, under which developers of commercial property are required to give a small stipend for park purposes in the neighborhoods in which they build.

Lehrer says the stipend could be increased and limitations eased as to where the money might be spent.

The proponents of change along the river acknowledge that the obstacles are great.

Lewis MacAdams, president of Friends of the Los Angeles River, for instance, envisions putting the railroad tracks around Union Station underground.

“You’re dealing with very expensive land,” he conceded. “There are many jurisdictions and the necessary transactions will be complex.”

Visionary Ideas

But, he said, the Harvard design scenarios have opened eyes to what could be done, and some of the visions could well be realized if political leaders get behind the projects.

At most points now, particularly through the core of Los Angeles, the river is an eyesore.

But pieces of a beautiful future are already coming together. A total of 72 acres has been acquired at Taylor Yard and the Cornfield. MacAdams hopes the parks will be completed in 10 years.

In Long Beach, the planning at this point is more comprehensive under the concept “Long Beach RiverLink, connecting city to river.”

Under the direction of project manager Susan Zoske, city workers, private citizens and a design studio at Cal Poly Pomona crafted a plan to beautify the eastern bank of the river. The size of the strips of land would vary from as wide as 225 feet to as narrow as 25 feet. The Long Beach City Council adopted the plan unanimously.

The river’s west bank is largely given over to the Long Beach Freeway. Originally, city planners foresaw building a loop highway around Long Beach and obtained substantial right of way on the east side with that purpose, since abandoned, in mind. That now gives the planners a head start on land acquisition.

A key issue, says Zoske, is inadequate open space on Long Beach’s west side next to the river, which has just 4.7 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents, compared with 16.7 per 1,000 on the city’s east side.

Conducting a tour of the project area for two hours recently, Zoske pointed out how starkly ugly industrial land could be turned into parks.

That would be true in the Wrigley Heights area, where the city is already acquiring parcels to change what amounts to wasteland into a greenbelt, and negotiations are underway with Southern California Edison to put parks under unsightly power poles in exchange for allowing construction of some commercial buildings.

Phil Hester, director of parks and recreation for Long Beach, said the city hopes to have about eight acres of parkland per 1,000 residents in central Long Beach and the west side in the next 10 years. That would mean creating about 1,000 acres more.

Creating Parks

“We have been actively pursuing it, looking at all the opportunities along the river, conceptualizing how they would fit together,” Hester said.

“We have eight or 10 extremely active projects right on the river, targeted for purchase. We are looking at the conservancies and state park bond propositions to finance this.”

An aide to Hester in the development of the parkland is Dennis Eschen, who told of one recent case near the river in which the city was bequeathed land for a neighborhood mini-park when an 80-year-old resident died.

In Sherman Oaks, the garden along the river was the idea of Lynn Marquardt, a neighborhood resident who has since moved away. She was responding to the devastation caused by the Northridge quake.

The Village Gardeners of the Los Angeles River has grown to more than 100 paying members and has a list of more than 400 volunteers. Annual memberships are $15 for singles, $25 for couples. But as one of the leaders, Annette Fuller, says, “Anyone can become a volunteer member if they are willing to donate their time to working in the gardens, or participate in any of our special events.”

Riverside Garden

Many do. The Village Gardeners, aided by schoolchildren, Eagle Scouts and community groups, do all the weeding themselves.

The group obtained three $5,000 neighborhood matching funds grants from the Los Angeles Department of Public Works to establish an irrigation system, and another $5,000 matching grant to paint a mural.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power granted the garden an agricultural rate for its water.

“It’s a community garden; it belongs to everyone,” Fuller said. “If you want to plant anything or weed, it’s up to you.”

But trees are not allowed. The city has banned them for fear they could be swept away in floods and do damage downstream.

The group regularly solicits community help. “I never asked for anything in my whole life,” said Fuller, “and now I’m shameless. I never hesitate to ask for anything.”

The garden is slowly advancing toward Coldwater Canyon Avenue, half a mile east of Fulton, where it will link up with other garden efforts underway in Studio City.

“The Friends of the L.A. River talk about a greenbelt the entire length of the river,” Fuller said. “Our neighborhood has made a start.”