Land to Be Bought for New Park

The city’s Recreation and Parks Commission voted Wednesday to acquire the last chunk of property for a new, 3 1/2-acre park that is expected to be named Sepulveda Park West.

The parcel, a quarter-acre lot, includes a 2,094-square-foot structure that once operated as a topless bar. The building, which has been abandoned for years, still has a large billboard advertising exotic dancers, cocktails and satellite-TV sports.

The five-member Recreation and Parks Commission unanimously approved buying the property for $212,398, which will come from tobacco tax funds.

Adjacent to the building is a 3.3-acre trash-covered dirt field that the city bought two years ago, intending to build the park, city parks officials said.

Although a final design has not been accepted, the park is expected to have soccer fields, a jogging path, basketball courts, a children’s play area, bathrooms and a parking lot for about 30 vehicles.

“We should break ground next summer, around July,” said Ellen Oppenheim, city parks general manager who oversees 15,000 acres of parkland. “It shouldn’t take more than six to nine months to complete.”

The empty field on the corner of Sepulveda Boulevard and Parthenia Place is now fenced off, but homeless people and beer-drinking youths still hang out there.

Residents and community leaders are eager to clean up the area and get the park completed.

They see it as a great hope for an area once so dangerous that police barricaded it to keep out drug dealers and gangbangers.

“It’s going to breathe new life into North Hills,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Alex Padilla, who represents the area.

The dirt lot has been vacant for more than 50 years, said Harry Coleman, head of the North Hills Community Coordinating Council, an organization of more than 1,200 residents working to improve the area.

For years, the group has campaigned to get a park in an area with few recreation facilities.

“We’ve conducted surveys among residents, even gang members, for years, and recreation is one of the things that always comes up,” Coleman said. “This area is screaming for green land. It certainly doesn’t need any more apartment buildings.”

The cost of converting the field into a park has yet to be determined, but Oppenheim said funding will come from Propositions A and K, voter-approved bond measures passed in 1992 and 1996 to develop parks and open space.

“We’re enthusiastically going forward because this is a very important project for that community,” she said.