Burbank Gets Grant for Wildwood Park : $1 Million Will Go to Build Nature Center, Expand Trail Network

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy awarded $1 million in state money Wednesday to the City of Burbank to expand a network of hiking trails and build a nature center at the 500-acre Wildwood Canyon Park.

In allocating the money to the conservancy last August, the Legislature asked that the money be used to improve the Burbank part of the Rim of the Valley Trail corridor, said Richard Inga, the director of Burbank’s Department of Parks and Recreation. The corridor consists of hiking and equestrian trails that connect mountain ranges encircling the San Fernando Valley.

Part of the money will be used to connect an existing 1 1/2 miles of hiking trails in Wildwood Canyon Park to the Rim of the Valley trail, Inga said. Plans also call for designing hiking trails and improving existing ones. Picnic tables, drinking fountains and restrooms also will be added.

Wildwood Canyon Park, a wilderness area in the Verdugo Mountains at the top of Harvard Road, was hit hard by storms in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The storms caused widespread erosion and damaged trails and picnic sites, Inga said.

“This money will help us in part to restore what was there as well as to improve it,” he said.

Burbank’s Department of Parks and Recreation this week issued a request to landscape architects for proposals to improve the park. The City Council will hire a firm and decide which improvements to make before Jan. 1, Inga said. The deadline for the proposals is Dec. 11.

Construction of the nature center is scheduled to begin after June 1, Inga said. Its location has not been decided.

It is not considered possible to build in much of the parkland, which is in a steep canyon. “We want to do a minimum of grading for building because we don’t want to disturb the natural topography any more than we have to,” Inga said.

The city of Burbank has tried to acquire all privately owned land in the Verdugo Mountains since the early 1960s, and now owns more than 2,500 acres of open space.