NORTHRIDGE: A Perfect Park

IT’S JUST ACROSS town from Aliso-Pico, but the Northridge Recreation Center is a million miles away in atmosphere. Opened in 1961, this 28-acre park on Reseda Boulevard in the heart of the West Valley serves a largely middle-class-to-affluent area and is often cited by the Recreation and Parks Department as being all a city park should be.

Unlike many urban parks in Southern California, this one never really deteriorated after Proposition 13 cut its budget in 1978. For one thing, its idyllic, suburban location has ensured that it remains well-used and well-kept. Set in a neighborhood chock-full of neat and tidy houses, the center is immaculate, with rolling hills and grassy picnic areas surrounded by pine, maple and birch trees, as well as baseball diamonds, tennis courts and a swimming pool. The park offers Northridge residents more than 100 classes, ranging from calligraphy to soccer, each semester. Also, the center runs a full preschool and day-care program, has 44 teams in its baseball league, offers two summer camp programs and even features a summer theater workshop.

Each semester, about 2,000 youngsters and adults take advantage of the cultural and sports activities that are held on the grounds or in the park’s three facilities: a community center with classrooms and an indoor gym, a preschool site, and a house with a dance studio, ceramics area and kitchen. Except for the occasional graffito, which is usually painted over immediately, or beer-drinking by teen-agers on park grounds, crime is relatively non-existent at Northridge, according to Los Angeles Police Sgt. Ted De Maegt. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the LAPD’s Devonshire division is just up the street from the park or that the division’s officers frequently drive through park property on their way to and from calls, he adds. It’s even safe for an evening stroll, De Maegt says.

Like most successful parks, this one has a strong director. Judy Taylor, 49, considers the Northridge Recreation Center her second home--as well she should. For 24 of the past 28 years, Taylor, a bespectacled earth-mother type with a quick smile, has worked at the park. And for the past eight years, she has been its director.

“The community has always wanted recreation; they’ve always supported our classes, and any program I’d put on, they’d come to,” Taylor says. That was true even after Proposition 13, when Northridge, like every other center, lost its city-paid part-time staff members who kept the facility open evenings and weekends.

Through the “buy-back” system instituted by the Parks Department, Northridge was able to become self-sustaining by charging fees of $16 to $30 per semester for classes and holding special fund-raising activities. Now, the park generates about $250,000 in fees annually, the department says. Taylor estimates that the center raises enough money to pay for 350 to 400 hours of staff time each week, which goes to the salaries of class instructors and the park’s 40 to 60 recreation assistants. The park is also supported by the local Chamber of Commerce, the Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, which recently donated a van to pick up children for Northridge’s after-school Latch Key program.

On a typical afternoon recently, energetic preteens could choose a class in gymnastics, Hawaiian dance, storybook dramatics, calligraphy, baton twirling or tole painting.

Down the grassy slope from the gym, baseball tryouts were taking place at the park’s three baseball diamonds, while children from the latch key program flew kites nearby.

“I’ve always loved this community and this park,” Taylor says. “It’s very fulfilling to know people are coming here because they enjoy it.”