Local News in Brief : Ball Field to Be Opened

The Los Angeles Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners on Wednesday approved a lease agreement that allows the city to transform a vacant lot at the end of the Glendale Freeway in the Silver Lake area into a children’s baseball diamond.

The three board members present voted unanimously to lease the 1.8-acre parcel from the California Department of Transportation at $1 a year for 10 years.

Community activists have fought for a park at the site for more than two years. They contend it is necessary because an existing field at the nearby Silver Lake Recreation Area is overcrowded and there is no other relatively flat piece of land available in the hilly neighborhood. Construction and landscaping of the site will take about two years, city officials said.

The agreement was reached in time for the city to make use of $30,000 in state funds to develop the site. The funds, a small but essential portion of the $420,000 necessary to turn what is now a vacant lot littered with asphalt fragments into a sports field, had to be used before the fiscal year ended Thursday.