Valley Commentary : Area Parks Are Refuges for People and Wildlife

Things just aren’t what they used to be. Remember when the great outdoors were free? No more. Want to park at Malibu Lagoon? Six bucks, even if you stay half an hour. Hiking on a trail in a county park to smell the flowers will cost you. Want to play softball in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area? Get your wallet out.

What’s going on here anyway? The city Department of Recreation and Parks says it has no money and must convert to pay-as-you-go, or else. Plans are in the works to hand over 56 acres west of Balboa Boulevard in the Sepulveda Basin to private concessionaires who will build 11 fee-charging softball fields and basketball courts. The city would get a percentage of the take. Meanwhile, backers of the proposed $125-million Arts Park project want to build a theater on the same parcel. Either way, another patch of scarce open space will disappear from the San Fernando Valley.

At Chatsworth Reservoir in the far West Valley are a 10-acre pond full of waterfowl in the winter and 1,300 acres of excellent wildlife habitat. Hundreds of Canada geese forage there every year.

The reservoir itself has been empty for 25 years, and the prime flatland surrounding it has long been coveted by real estate developers. The city Department of Water and Power, reluctant to dispose of this property in the past, has recently expressed an interest in selling or leasing it. Recreation and Parks, meanwhile, has cooked up a blockbuster recipe for the land. Here are the ingredients: two nine-hole executive-style golf courses, a banquet room, a driving range, a restaurant, a recreation center, a miniature golf course and a video arcade.

It takes little imagination to guess what would happen to the deer, road runners and 190 species of birds that have been seen in Chatsworth if this massive development is realized.

Other neat ideas cooking on the front burners at Rec and Parks are a water slide in Hansen Dam Recreation Area and food stands and batting cages in a number of small city parks. All would collect fees. A future park in North Hollywood may include a miniature golf course and a mini-car racetrack.

All city departments are crying the blues. A hiring freeze has been in effect for several years; employees who retire and quit are not replaced. Although Mayor Richard Riordan announced at a May community meeting in Woodland Hills that his proposed new budget actually increases funds for the Rec and Parks, the department insists it needs more money to carry on its business.

With a constantly growing population and more demand for facilities, this is probably true. But in its panic to cure the shortfall, the department is in danger of diminishing the value of its own property. (“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”) In a neighborhood park with baseball diamonds, a batting cage may not be a bad idea. But what about the kids who can’t afford to pay to use it? And will the amount of money generated be worth the trouble?

In larger parks like Chatsworth and Sepulveda, the losses would vastly outweigh the gains. Parks like these are refuges for people as well as animals and birds. After a week of fighting freeway traffic and the stresses of work (and the headlines) we need the relief of open space with a view of the mountains. We need a chance to unwind, to walk a path through grass and trees away from the noise and right angles of the city.

The mayor and the Rec and Parks director say turning parkland into fee-generating concessions is only a proposal, not a fait accompli. There will be public hearings and much discussion. City Councilman Hal Bernson, whose district includes Chatsworth, says of the plan there, “It’s not going to fly. We have preserved the reservoir because it is a sensitive wildlife refuge. . . . It is basically one of the last open spaces we have left.”

I hope he’s right. If Rec and Parks reaches its goal, it may achieve a short-term cash bonanza. But it will have sold its assets, dipped into its capital. Genuine parkland will have been transformed into restaurants and sand traps, ball fields and parking lots. Once paved over and built upon, the wild habitat can never be recaptured. It is lost forever.