SIMI VALLEY : District Gets Funds for Picnic Tables

Simi Valley picnickers will have more tables to spread out on by the summer of 1995, thanks to a federal grant awarded recently to the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District.

The district won a $67,700 matching-funds grant from the U.S. Land and Water Conservation Fund two weeks ago to build two sheltered clusters of picnic tables at Rancho Simi Community Park, district General Manager Jerry Gladden said Thursday. The district would pay the rest of the $133,241 construction cost, he said.

District workers expect to start building the complex of 22 tables, complete with lights and running water, at summer’s end. They will be built next to the restroom at the east end of the park near Erringer Road, he said.

The new complex would more than double the picnic capacity for the district’s busiest park, Gladden said. It also will help bear the burden of crowds of picnickers who book summer weekends solid for the popular picnic pavilions at Rancho Tapo Community Park and Rancho Santa Susana Community Park, he said.

The new twin pavilions, to be built on either side of a barbecue pit at Rancho Simi Community Park, will be subject to reservation fees like those charged for the other areas, Gladden said. A private party could reserve one of the new pavilions for $76 for the day or both for $152, while a corporate picnic would pay $287 a day for both and a nonprofit group could rent at the reduced rate of $38 for one or $76 for both, Gladden said.

“And if they’re not reserved, they’re available on a first-come, first-served basis,” he said.