Making a Difference : People for Parks: Recreational Rescue Operation

Los Angeles parks have a roller-coaster history: Once hotbeds of youth activities ranging from baseball to ballet, they boast “graduates” including former Dodger outfielder Eric Davis and former Mayor Tom Bradley, who went on from a parks program to land a track scholarship to UCLA. But a chronic funding crunch followed passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. In many poorer neighborhoods, sports and after-school programs vanished. Entire parks were lost to gangs and drug peddling. Among those trying to write a happier ending to the unfolding story is the nonprofit People for Parks.

PFP organized in 1989 after 150 activists, environmentalists and business leaders turned out for a conference on problems at parks. Its founders include Jack Foley, a professor of leisure studies at Cal State Northridge, and Carlyle W. Hall Jr. of the Center for Law in the Public Interest. In 1992, PFP sponsored the successful Proposition A, which created an assessment district that raised $540 million to refurbish aging parks countywide.

Program Director Steve Kelly is PFP’s lone paid staffer while the group searches for a top executive. PFP’s $115,000 budget comes from grants and donations from its 30-member board, which includes the Sierra Club, recreation experts, architects, activists and attorneys. “The goal is to give the community the tools to take back their park,” Kelly says. This can mean tapping into Proposition A funds to convert an old tennis court into a soccer field in City Terrace Park in East Los Angeles, getting a grant for more classes and team jerseys at Trinity Park in South-Central Los Angeles or borrowing a few leisure studies students to run an event. So far they’ve worked with communities to revive five parks and assisted the Watts Friendship Sports League with recreation programs.

WHAT PEOPLE FOR PARKS MEANS TO A COMMUNITY

“When I came last June, Trinity Park was dead. Five gangs had taken over and there were only sporadic activities. I started talking to businesses, schools, Girl and Boy scouts but People For Parks helped focus on getting these people moving. We had a family festival in September and 300 people came, some families who had never been here though they live a block away. Now there’s less graffiti and gangs. We have basketball and flag football leagues and a senior citizen club developing.”

--LARRY MELLON

Director, Trinity Park, South-Central

*

“Last year, we lost a lot of kids around here, shot by gangs, drive-bys. Now we’re seeing more children playing, involved. Larry Mellon and People for Parks and that festival gave us parents a lot of hope. The more we work together, the more we can beautify the community.”

--ELIZABETH TORRES

15-year neighborhood resident and president of El Santo Nino community center near Trinity Park

WHERE THEY’VE HELPED

People for Parks has operated its Park ReNew program at the following sites:

Pacoima

Reseda

Canoga Park

Los Angeles

Watts*

* Works with the Watts Friendship Sports League to sponsor recreation programs at several housing projects in Watts.

PARK DEFICIENT

Los Angeles has less municipal park land than any other major city in California--less than half the National Recreation and Park Assn.’s recommendation of 10 acres per 1,000 residents.

Acres of park land per 1,000 inhabitants

San Diego: 20

San Jose: 16.5

San Francisco: 11.6

Los Angeles: 4.6

Source: 1988 study by Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority

TO GET INVOLVED

Call People for Parks at (310) 474-4248. Compiled for The Times by Patricia A. Konley