Ellen Oppenheim

Look out from Ellen Oppenheim’s 13th-floor office in City Hall East and you immediately see her problem: As general manager of the city’s Recreation and Parks Department, Oppenheim controls 15,000 acres of parkland. But it’s not nearly enough. With .91 acres of usable parkland per 1,000 residents, far less than in any other major U.S. city, those green oases are almost invisible amid forests of office towers and apartment buildings.

Hired nine months ago to revive a troubled, backwater department, Oppenheim’s challenge is twofold: to add more open space while modernizing the city’s 385 parks, many in sorry shape. “I could visit a park a day for a year and still not see them all,” she says. So far, she’s seen half and admits, “We have an uphill climb ahead.”

The 49-year-old Oppenheim is no cheerleading coach with a whistle around her neck. Think tailored suits, pearls and buzzwords, like “accountability” and “customer service,” that bring to mind mergers and acquisitions rather than fun and games. She combines a private-sector stint in convention and trade-show planning with 10 years in the San Jose park system. Talk with her long enough, and enthusiasm bubbles through the corporate speak. “When we do our jobs best in this field, we truly touch and influence people’s lives.”

Success will turn on her ability to streamline an organization so ossified that, in some cases, on-site park directors must make repeated calls to get a broken picnic table fixed or a burned-out gym lightbulb replaced. Oppenheim is also counting on neighbors taking a proprietary interest in their local parks. To that end, the department has asked each park director to create a park advisory board of residents to help decide on repair priorities, new class offerings and fund-raising. Some 150 of these boards are up and running, with more to come.

Raised in New Jersey, Oppenheim resides with her husband in Los Feliz. With their daughter in college, she’s taken up golf and jogging in her off hours.

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Question: You are relatively new to Los Angeles. What surprised you about the city’s parks and their programs?

Answer: Because we have a very limited amount of neighborhood and community parkland . . . the use of those facilities is very intensive. That makes for some real maintenance challenges.

Q: What goals have you set for your first year?

A: Our goal is to construct and maintain the best-quality facilities, to offer valuable programs and to provide the most efficient and effective recreation and parks services anywhere in the country. That’s not a one-year goal; that’s a long-term vision. . . . We’ve taken a number of steps [to get there]. I have a reorganization underway in the department that’s focused on improving service delivery to children and adults; eliminating some duplication [to] stretch our resources; ensuring that we have clear accountability for all functions; and expediting completion of our many construction programs. Recognizing that there are limitations to available city programs--and there always will be--we want to do more effective partnerships and be more successful going after grants.

Q: You’ve made a lot of management changes in the department. But recreation-center directors--the folks in charge at individual parks--still complain they have to beg for arts and crafts supplies or toilet paper. Why?

A: It takes a fair distance to turn a battleship. . . . Some of the things we need to do are very fundamental: . . . restroom supplies and increased staffing from Memorial Day through Labor Day at our most heavily used facilities. . . . We’re rescheduling our staff so that they’re available at the hours when patrons are in the parks so that we can restock, clean restrooms, pick up trash.

Q: So will people see cleaner parks this summer?

A: Absolutely.

Q: In terms of supplies and programs?

A: One division of our department, Field Operations, is going to be focused on those two functions--recreation programming and park maintenance--as its primary activity, day to day.

Q: Do today’s kids and adults want different activities at the city parks than in past years?

A: Sure. We have an insatiable interest in soccer here. . . . Similarly, we’re seeing a growing interest among young people in golf. Another area we’re seeing a tremendous interest is in computer skills and games.

Q: Benches and picnic tables are broken at many parks. Some bathrooms haven’t been upgraded since they were built in the 1950s or ‘60s. By passing Propositions A and K in 1992 and 1996, voters directed millions of dollars to capital improvements in city parks. What difference has this money made?

A: We’ve completed over 100 projects in the last three years. It has meant new restrooms, additional fields, new children’s play areas, expanded and new buildings, several child-care centers under construction.

Q: L.A. has less parkland per person than almost any major city. Can the city acquire more? If not, how do you get more recreational space?

A: There isn’t a lot of available land. But with the recent passage of Proposition 12, the parks bond act, one of the priorities . . . the city adopted is that the per-capita funding . . . that will come to Los Angeles ought to be used principally for the acquisition of additional parklands. We’re going to have to get very creative. I’ll give you an example: Last weekend, Lexington Pocket Park opened. It’s a .17-acre park, off Western at Lexington. . . . It provides a patch of green and a play area for children in a neighborhood that’s heavily multifamily housing and apartments and has no park nearby. . . . I expect we’re going to have to do more smaller parks as options. I think we’re going to have to look at creative reuse of some alternative commercial kinds of structures. [If we need] an after-school recreation site in a commercial part of the city, we may explore whether we can rent a storefront and adapt it to make a suitable site.

Q: Won’t you be competing with the L.A. Unified School District for new sites?

A: Yes, at a certain level. I would hope that we could work with LAUSD, and I’ve recommended that Proposition 12 dollars fund our portion of, say, a new co-located site that could include school, park and community center. We’ve had discussions with LAUSD on a couple of different sites.

Q: What about efforts to create parkland along the Los Angeles River?

A: I was involved in the Guadalupe River Parkway project in San Jose, where [several city agencies] worked together over many years to create a park chain through the downtown corridor in what would have otherwise been strictly a concrete viaduct. We have a bigger challenge here in that [the viaduct] is already built, so, for the foreseeable future, we can probably do more on the margin than in terms of redesigning the entire river pathway. But I’d like to see us maximize the opportunities along the river for bikeways [and] islands of parks. . . . The department has participated in some [landscaping projects] with Northeast Trees (a nonprofit tree planting organization) on department property along the river.

Q: There’s a tremendous disparity among facilities and programs offered at parks in different neighborhoods across the city. Why, for example, is the spring-program brochure at one park 30 pages and the offerings at another one sheet?

A: There are a couple of things that may play into that. One is different communities are interested in different things. Basketball may be appealing in one neighborhood, in another neighborhood, a summer theater program for young people may be more appealing. We consciously try to adapt our services to the needs and interests of a community. The example I often give is: What do we consider our standards for a summer day camp? When some neighborhoods have wanted several field trips a week, along with special amenities and programs, and have been able and willing to pay for that, we’ve tried to listen and respond to that. In other communities, the dominant issue may have been “We can’t afford very much” and “We want a day camp,” so the department has attempted to respond with a day camp that is compatible with the community’s budget requirements. I think we have to step back and identify the appropriate standard of service that we ought to provide throughout the city, then figure out how to fund that.

Q: Schools have PTAs, parent councils and booster clubs to advocate for them. How can neighborhoods become advocates for their local parks?

A: We welcome and invite volunteer participation in community cleanup days [and] special events in the park. We encourage people to get involved as a coach in their children’s league [or] through the park advisory boards, and we try to publicize those meetings to get people involved. We do it through volunteer oversight committees so that when we’re planning a capital project, we invite the community in to shape and design that project.

Q: How can people volunteer to help? Where should they complain if bathrooms at their park are dirty?

A: A good place to start is by speaking directly with the director at that park. They can also come and talk to [the parks] commission. We rotate commission meetings around in the community--at least every other meeting is out in the field in a different part of the city. In May, we’re going to institute a new 800-number so people can find out about programs and offerings . . . and talk to an individual. We already have a newly expanded Web site, www.laparks.com. They can also write to my office. I read every letter that comes in, and we respond.

Q: As parks age and become overcrowded, many residents have opted to join private tennis clubs or enroll their children in privately run summer day camps. Other families can’t afford even the city park’s programs. Given such disparities, how do you attract new families?

A: We want to keep serving the ones we’re serving well today, and we want to reach out and draw in new users. One example: The year-round schools offer free lunches to students from low-income families. When the year-round schools are off-track, and the kids are out of school, we’ll offer free lunches and afternoon programs, starting at 11 a.m. and going through dinner time, so those kids aren’t kicking around on the street. We’re starting in April at 20 sites; by early summer, we’ll expand it to additional sites. . . . We have the ability to ensure that kids don’t go hungry and provide them active, healthy activities when often the alternative is far less desirable.

Q: What’s new for this summer?

A: Summer free swim will again be in place for anyone up to age 17 at every city pool every day during the summer. Last summer, a half-million young people took advantage of this program. We’ve extended the weekend hours at pools and added an extra couple of weeks at the end of the summer. We will have over 100 day camps available. We have several sports academies. These are weeklong training and learning programs in softball, soccer and baseball. . . . The Tregnan Junior Golf Academy will open in June in Griffith Park. It’s a new junior-golf facility that will have several holes, a driving range and some putting greens. [It’s] a learning and teaching facility oriented specifically to the needs of young people. *