Wilderness Agency to Build Inner-City Park

On a bleak and lonely industrial stretch of South-Central Los Angeles, a little bit of mountain open space will soon be found.

That, at least, is what the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy hopes will evolve when it ventures away from its mountain turf to build its first inner-city park: a $3.5-million project at Compton and Slauson avenues, where thousands of rusting pipes are now stored.

Joseph T. Edmiston, the state agency’s executive director, says plans for the eight-acre “nature park” include trails, meadows, oak and sycamore trees, shrubs and a community garden. There is even talk of putting a man-made stream on the property.

“When it is fully developed, we hope that people will look at it and say: ‘That must have been [the undeveloped property of] some estate that has been there for years and the city just grew up around it,’ ” Edmiston said.

Construction could begin in a few months.

The idea for the park grew out of a confrontation between the agency and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Rita Walters, who had questioned why the residents of her 9th Council District should support the conservancy in its ongoing mission to acquire thousands of acres of wilderness and miles of hiking trails.

After all, Walters argued, many of her constituents lacked access to the Santa Monica Mountains parkland, and it seemed that little was being done to make it easier for them to get there.

Edmiston acknowledged that the historic tension over whether making mountain parkland accessible to the public threatens its purity.

“There is a segment of the environmentalist community that feels that any accommodation of the natural areas to the needs of inner city is a corruption of the natural areas,” he said.

Discussions between Walters and the conservancy initially focused on ways to add amenities such as shade trees and parking to some mountain park acreage. But they eventually turned to the notion of creating a similar setting in the inner city.

Walters and Edmiston boarded a city van and scouted the councilwoman’s district.

The location they agreed upon was the city’s Department of Water and Power’s old “pipe graveyard site.” The signs of life are few--a huge cactuses, a sprawling avocado tree and a walnut tree. A chain-link fence surrounding the property is a billboard for day laborers, who display their telephone numbers.

Once the hub of the city’s industrial belt, the area today is surrounded by aging homes, old auto-body shops and recycling centers where scavengers redeem aluminum cans and cardboard boxes lifted out of the trash.

It is as desolate today as it was more than 20 years ago when the Symbionese Liberation Army hid out in a house nearby with kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst. It’s also as dangerous: Last week, four people were killed and three wounded in three separate drive-by shooting incidents over a 24-hour period on one block nearby.

“Right now, it is nothing but an eyesore,” Waters said as she toured the site last week. “But one day it is going to be a lovely park, something to be proud of.”

The conservancy leased the parcel for $1 a year from the DWP, which has owned the property since 1909. Park improvements will be funded with money from recently approved county and state park bond measures, Edmiston said.

The conservancy’s goal is not to reproduce the natural environment that existed hundreds of years ago, but to build a park with a variety of vegetation, encircled by large earthen berms and a wrought iron fence with wood posts.

Located at a busy intersection, close to the Harbor Freeway and the Blue Line, the park would draw visitors from throughout the area, Edmiston said.

The conservancy will unveil its plans for the neighborhood park at a community meeting at 10 a.m. Saturday at Holmes Avenue Elementary School, 5108 Holmes Ave.

News that a park is being built in the community has been well received by residents.

“We have the highest concentration of people in the city,” said Juanita Tate, who lives in the neighborhood and is the executive director of concerned Citizens of South-Central Los Angeles. “We have three or four people living in one structure, so socializing outside the home is important. Our parks are crowded.”

In addition, she said, parks “soften the environment” in an area with a high number of abandoned industrial buildings.

Across the street from the pipe yard, watching the officials tour, Charlie Campbell, a 33-year-old gardener, wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

“They are planning to put a park here,” he was told.

“Oh, that would be nice, but are they going to be hiring people to build this park?” he asked. “That would give folks a feeling like they have a piece of it.”

When a reporter relayed the question, Edmiston said he would try to make that happen.

A group of children on their way home from school passed the lot and looked in amazement at Edmiston, Walters and group of officials walking over the property.

They pointed to Edmiston, dressed in his park uniform, a “Smokey Bear” hat on his head.

“What kind of cop is that?” one of the children asked. “They going to put a park here? When? I can’t wait.”

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Urban Retreat

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is planning its first inner-city park, set in South-Central Los Angeles.