Sunland-Tujunga Park Dedicated to Late Councilman

For as long as anyone can remember, the dusty lot behind the Sunland-Tujunga community building has been an eyesore.

Overgrown with weeds and often used as an illegal trash dump, the two-acre plot of city property was not much more than “a piece of junky old land,” according to City Councilman Joel Wachs.

But where once weeds and trash covered the ground, city parks officials envision the first public park built in the area in a decade.

On Monday, Wachs and others dug into soft, wet dirt with gold-painted shovels during a groundbreaking ceremony for a new park named after the late City Councilman Howard Finn, who had worked until his death to turn the vacant lot into a neighborhood park. Bulldozers began churning the dirt last week.

Finn Park, scheduled to open in February, will be the first park built in the east San Fernando Valley since Fehlhaber-Houk Park opened in 1980 in Sunland-Tujunga.

“This is a day we’ve been waiting for a long time,” Wachs said in a voice made hoarse by the flu.

Project Manager Kathleen Chan said the park will include a children’s play area and a sand volleyball court as well as picnic tables and barbecue facilities. Paved trails for the handicapped will connect the park with the community center, which faces Foothill Boulevard, and with a library building that will be built soon, Chan said.

Plans call for the creation of a community garden later.

Finn’s widow, Anne, said her husband, elected to the City Council in 1981, was planning a park at the site when he died in 1986.

“This is lovely,” she said. “There are not enough parks.”