Sepulveda Basin an Outdoor Oasis in the Valley : Recreation: It’s become the second most popular park in Los Angeles. Some would change it; others want it left alone.

A decade of steady but quiet development has made the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area the second-busiest park in Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley’s version of New York’s Central Park, attracting more than a million visitors a year.

Although Griffith Park remains the most-visited park in Los Angeles, development in the 2,031-acre Sepulveda Basin has turned the rolling flatlands into a bustling recreation area that reflects the Valley’s cultural diversity.

Nevertheless, the park’s growing popularity has not assured its future development. The city wants to continue to pursue a plan adopted in 1981 to develop the basin as an “active” park, one that features facilities such as performing arts and community centers. But because the city is chronically short of money, progress has been slow. That disappoints some park patrons. But environmental groups, who oppose further construction, say they don’t mind the delays.

Those groups were pleased, however, by the newest feature of the park--a 60-acre wildlife refuge dedicated in March.

Once nothing more than a flatland to collect flood water, the basin is one of the last large patches of green in the Valley. For years, it has been a retreat for residents who have watched development squeeze out open spaces. The park, owned by the Army Corps of Engineers and leased to Los Angeles, is less famous than city-owned Griffith Park, which is more than twice the size of the Sepulveda Basin.

“We don’t ballyhoo it the way we do Griffith Park,” said Alonzo Carmichael, planning officer for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. “We own that.”

Even so, the basin--bounded roughly by the San Diego and Ventura freeways, Victory Boulevard and White Oak Avenue--has seen a steady rise in visitors over the past decade. Some have estimated that the park attracts more than 100,000 new visitors each year.

“Since some of the new facilities have opened over the past few years, we have definitely seen an increase in park usage,” said Joel Breitbart, a former planner for the city’s Recreation and Parks Department.

On any weekend afternoon, a stroll through the park reveals the diversity of its patrons. On close-cut grass fields, soccer teams sweep a black and white ball toward the goal. Runners and walkers follow the paths that meander through the basin. The thwack of a golf club hitting a ball sounds, while on the other side of the park, the high-pitched whine of a model airplane engine fills the air. A migrating bird touches down soundlessly on a lake, undisturbed by the bird watchers peering from behind a screen of tall grasses.

Since 1981, when the city laid out a master plan for the basin, the area has seen the addition of an 80-acre sports center, a wildlife preserve, a field for flying model planes and several miles of bicycle and running trails. The area is also home to three golf courses.

“You have everything you need right there,” said Phil Manzi, senior park ranger for the San Fernando Valley.

Many of the improvements to the park have been financed by a Corps of Engineers program that matches city money for development of the land. City officials said they would like to see Sepulveda Basin developed further, but constant fiscal constraints mean progress is slow and some of the projects envisioned in the basin’s master plan have yet to be started. The 160-acre Lake Balboa Park, which would be for rowing and other water activities, for instance, is two years behind schedule.

The facilities added to the basin have transformed it from what city officials call a “passive” park, one that provides little more than open space, to an “active” one, where facilities are available for organized sports and games. It is that change, some believe, that has made the Sepulveda Basin the Valley’s most popular outdoor recreation area.

Ted Heyl, assistant planning officer for the Recreation and Parks Department, said he remembers that when he was a child Hansen Dam Recreation Area was the most popular outdoor spot in the Valley. But dredging of the reservoir there led to a gradual cutback in recreational facilities that has left it behind the Sepulveda Basin.

Some longtime users of the basin fear that over-development will destroy the basin’s natural beauty. They want it to remain an oasis of green within sight of the bank towers of Ventura Boulevard.

“The basin should be strictly for people-powered recreation. . . . That’s what we come here to enjoy,” said Sandy Kobrine, 49, who jogs 6 1/2 miles each day at the basin. “No motor-powered sports should be allowed here. Too much noise and not enough nature.”

A proposed arts center near Victory and Balboa boulevards drew the fire of the Sierra Club, which sued to stop the project because the club contended that the Corps of Engineers broke environmental laws that required the consideration of alternative sites. The settlement ensures that the Corps will study locating the center outside the basin, planner Sheila Murphy said.

“Those kind of structures do have their place in the built environment, but this is a natural environment,” said Jill Swift, local parks chairwoman of the Sierra Club’s Angeles chapter.

Environmentalists also have criticized the handling of the wildlife refuge opened in March on the eastern edge of the basin. Originally supportive of the $1-million preserve, groups such as the Audubon Society were disturbed to find that the refuge was being invaded by people and dogs. Dogs are not allowed in the area and people are required to remain on dirt paths along the east side of the refuge’s 11-acre lake.

Manzi said it will take time before people realize that the area, which has been popular with pet owners as an off-leash area, is restricted.

Others complain that the city is not moving fast enough in completing its plans for the park.

The Lake Balboa Park project, for instance, is now little more than grassland and dirt with a 100-foot-wide, 20-foot-deep bowl waiting to be filled with treated water from the nearby Tillman Water Reclamation Plant. The park, initially scheduled to have been completed in 1987, is two years from completion, said Gary Schussolin, a civil engineer for the Parks and Recreation Department.

That annoys Bennett Mintz, a member of the Sierra Pacific Flyfishers Assn., a group of about 600 fly-fishers who helped the Corps of Engineers design the park and lake.

“We were initially promised . . . a fly-casting area on the lake that we could have control over for special group programs,” he said. Mintz said the group has not been able to attain its space because the city is two years behind schedule.

Congress authorized construction of the Sepulveda Dam in 1936. Construction began four years later. The dam was one of five built in Los Angeles to prevent flooding that could be caused by a “100-year flood”--a storm so severe it has only a 1% probability of occurring in any year.

Flood control remains the basin’s principal purpose. Recreation is secondary and the Corps of Engineers, which has leased the land to the city since 1951, has the right to reclaim the basin during an emergency. It is the basin’s use as a flood-control reservoir that has saved it from being paved over and covered with tract homes, apartments or mini-malls, Carmichael said.

And during heavy rains, the basin’s original purpose is apparent. Golf courses and playing fields several times have been flooded under several feet of water.

“It works,” Jess Miller, a contract coordinator for the Recreation and Parks Department, said of the basin’s dual role.