Corporate Logos Help Add Some Green to Needy Parks’ Budgets

The backboards at Lennox Park were once covered with graffiti, leading neighborhood toughs to hassle 12-year-old Christian Pantoja whenever he went there to shoot hoops with friends.

“Hey,” the would-be thugs would say, gesturing at the spray-painted tags, “this is mine. Can’t you see my name up there?”

But the backboards have been replaced and a new name adorns their shiny surface, one Christian finds nonthreatening: Sprite, the popular soft drink.

“These look nice,” Christian said during a break from a one-on-one game, “because we like Sprite better.”

The backboards, also emblazoned with the soda company’s advertising slogan--”Obey your thirst”--aren’t the only changes at Lennox Park, which lies in a gritty unincorporated neighborhood south of Inglewood. A giant Sprite logo covers the center of the basketball court, and an elaborate mural along a wall a few yards away is dotted with brand logos of Sprite, Power-Ade and the Coca-Cola Co.’s top drink, Coke.

At Lennox Park, Coke is it. At least, it will be under a new program in which the soft drink giant, which also makes Sprite and the sports beverage Power-Ade, “sponsors” five county parks, providing maintenance and money--in return for being allowed to place its logo on public property.

In addition, Coca-Cola will pay $50,000 to the county and share 40% of its revenue from vending machines at the parks with the parks department. Margo Morales of the county’s Department of Parks and Recreation says the agency hopes to generate similar sponsorship and signage deals for more of the county’s 88 parks.

“Our goal is to ensure we’re able to provide the best quality programs to the community in a safe environment with whatever resources we can,” Morales said.

The program is one of the more visible aspects of the increasing involvement of private companies in the nation’s parks. As spending on parks dwindled during the 1980s and ‘90s, local agencies have tapped corporations to fund swimming lessons, festivals and, in rare cases, to provide basic maintenance for parks themselves.

In Harlem, the Saturn car company built equipment for a playground. In Boston, Coca-Cola and other corporations sponsor youth programs, such as free sailing lessons. In Los Angeles, a pet food company donates money to maintain dog parks.

“As a matter of survival they’re having to go out and generate funds,” said Jane Adams, executive director of the California Parks and Recreation Assn. “The agencies are trying very hard to maintain the same levels of services.”

Although a few cities, such as New York, accept corporate logos on refurbished backboards or park vehicles delivering in-line skating lessons, others say such displays send the wrong message.

“I don’t think a kid coming by a playground every day should be thinking they owe anybody for their park,” said Justine Liff, Boston’s parks commissioner. “Their park is their right.”

Not Relying Just on the Taxpayer

Still, with the era of big government officially over, parks officials and observers say cities can no longer rely solely on taxpayers.

“It’s kind of a ‘90s phenomenon because there used to be so much more money around,” said Brenda Kydd, who solicits corporate aid for the city of Los Angeles’ parks department. “A lot of the icing on the cake has disappeared, and so what I think these public-private partnerships are is an attempt to put the icing back on the cake.”

The county parks system has lived without its icing for years. During the county’s budget crisis in the early 1990s, the department’s budget was slashed 25%, with 100 staff positions eliminated through attrition and layoffs. Youth programs, such as computer classes and other after-school activities, were canceled.

The county budget has grown by more than $2 billion since its brush with bankruptcy in 1995, but the parks department has yet to recover. Last year was the first in which the agency got new funds from the Board of Supervisors to restore programs. This year, the county’s budget office urged supervisors to add $19.8 million to the agency’s budget because it was so short-staffed that parks were not being cleaned. Even with that additional money, the parks department still receives $2 million less from county coffers than it did before the cuts, said Sandra de La Riva, who manages the agency’s budget office.

General relief workers had been used to keep the parks clean by picking up trash, but welfare reform has eliminated that program. And a series of local bond measures, which pumped $200 million into the agency for construction of facilities in the next 10 years, is a mixed blessing, de La Riva added, because it does not include enough money to keep the new facilities open and staffed.

“It’s a constant juggling act,” said Lynn Willanesak, the regional operations manager for the department.

To help balance its books, the department turned to Coca-Cola.

Beverage companies have in recent years poured millions of dollars into public coffers in exchange for exclusive--and sometimes controversial--contracts with school districts or cities. Coke is now the “official” beverage of Huntington Beach and other Orange County cities, and Pepsi is poised to ink a similar, multimillion-dollar deal with San Diego.

The two soft drink giants competed for a contract to provide exclusive vending machine service at Los Angeles County’s parks, with Coca-Cola winning the bidding. Corporate assistance from Coke had already helped the county rebuild playground equipment at other parks, and the beverage company also donated new sports equipment emblazoned with the Power-Ade logo to replace beaten-up basketballs used at county recreation centers.

Along with the vending machine contract, Coca-Cola and the parks department embarked on a new sponsorship program, which was unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors in August with no discussion. The agreement calls for Coca-Cola to conduct a local campaign to raise money for the park, paint another mural, repaint picnic tables and place a sign over the park’s faded picnic area.

In return, Coca-Cola can place its logo on its additions to park property, though the department must approve all designs.

Morales, of the parks department, said the agency wants to “give the corporations that are assisting us recognition but make sure it doesn’t look like we’re selling the parks.”

Coca-Cola spokesman Bob Philips said the deal is a perfect marriage of business decisions and the public interest. “While obviously it provides us with increased access to the community for the sale of our products,” he said, “we also have an opportunity to better the quality of life for people in the community.”

Philips said Coca-Cola has provided backboards with the Sprite logo and “adopted” parks in other Southern California cities such as Compton, Montebello and Yucaipa, and has long collaborated with local muralists. “We really try to respond to the needs of the neighborhood,” he said.

Lennox is the first of five county parks--one in each supervisor’s district--that the beverage company will sponsor.

Mural Advertises Coke’s Soft Drinks

A patch of dying grass and buckling pavement amid rows of Eisenhower-era single family homes, Lennox Park is an oasis for the neighborhood. Entering from the west, the first sight is the lengthy, multicolored mural painted along an outside wall with pictures of athletes wearing clothes with Coke, Sprite and Power-Ade logos, the slogan “Siempre, Coca-Cola” and the Coca-Cola emblem looming over a smaller Los Angeles County seal.

On a recent afternoon, a cluster of men played a pickup game on one end of the cracked basketball court while Christian Pantoja and his friend Rafael Maldonado faced off on the other end. The two 12-year-olds stopped their game to kick a spent condom off the edge of the court, and homeless men dozed under trees less than 10 yards away.

Most had barely noticed the new backboards, mural and Sprite logo. “It’s cool,” said Rafael, comparing it to NBA arenas emblazoned with advertising. “We feel like pros.”

Anthony Ulloa, 43, an air-conditioning repairman, paused from his game and called the logos “propaganda.” He quickly added: “If you come here and fix this, we won’t care. This is the only thing we have here.”

Standing under a tree next to the courts, Odalis Gonzalez, 32, said she does not even bring her four children to the park for fear of gangs and vagrants. She hoped Coca-Cola could improve matters.

“Coke is a very big company and they should do something for the kids,” Gonzalez said, adding that she doesn’t understand concerns about advertising. “I could understand if it was a Marlboro sign. But a soda--it’s not something that’s bad for you.”

In her tiny office sandwiched between a day-care center and the basketball court, Yvette Mack is assailed by the constant ringing of her telephone. The bubbly Mack is the sole parks staffer assigned to Lennox Park full time. She emphasizes that the park is improving but acknowledges that it is still rundown. “You make your castle where you are,” she said.

Mack spends her day scheduling youth soccer and basketball games and calling around to scrape together some money for her park. She sweet-talked local hotels into kicking in enough funds to sponsor a day camp program, and dashes off pleas for donations between talking to a steady stream of youths who crowd into her office asking her to settle fights, direct them to the bathroom or just listen.

She has yet to see the effects of the money or services that Coca-Cola is scheduled to provide and said that the park will not be able to rely on that alone. “You just have to keep doing this,” she said, taking another phone call.