Destroyed Rec Center Rises Anew

On Friday the city of Los Angeles will dedicate the Granada Hills Recreation Center, more than six years after the previous center was destroyed in the Northridge earthquake.

The project is the largest to be completed in the San Fernando Valley with funds from Proposition K, by which voters in 1995 approved spending $750 million for park improvements over 25 years.

The new 14,000-square-foot building includes a gym, a stage, an exercise/ballet room, two meeting rooms, staff offices and restrooms. Since the earthquake, park staff members have worked in a rented trailer that was partitioned into several small rooms. Porta-potties served as the bathrooms.

“We are in the midst of recycling the largest park system in the world,” said Steve Soboroff, mayoral hopeful and president of the city parks commission, which oversees the work. “We have 212 fully funded projects under construction, just completed or in the design phase.”

The city broke ground on the project in July 1998 and was scheduled to open the center nine months later. But it took two years to complete, and the $2.3-million construction budget swelled by $550,000, or 23%. The overruns were due mostly to major redesign deemed essential by the city’s Department of Water and Power.

The project has not been without controversy. To Patti Friedman, the construction was mismanaged.

Although she is thrilled that the center is finally opening, she said she was troubled by the construction delays, the cost overruns and what she saw as the indifference of parks and recreation staff to any input from citizens like her. Parks officials failed to return her repeated phone calls, Friedman said.

“This is one of the first major projects out the door, and it was fraught with problems,” said Friedman, president of the Northeast San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce. “It was a building that should have been completed in nine months, and it took two years.”

The biggest problem the department has faced in implementing Proposition K was a shortage of project managers, said Robert Fawcett, director of planning and construction for the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks. Until this spring the department had just seven project managers handling more than 175 construction projects. Recently the department has added five new project managers to provide better oversight.

“There wasn’t enough staff to administer the amount of project money we had,” Fawcett said. “If we have good contractors and enough project managers, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Fawcett said half of the $550,000 in overruns was spent on electrical work that DWP deemed necessary after the contract was awarded.

Although Friedman was dissatisfied with the parks department, Leslie Deeds, a Granada Hills resident who also served on the citizens oversight committee, said she thought the department did a great job.

“It’s unfortunate that it wasn’t done in the time it was supposed to be done. It would be nice to have everything happen overnight,” Deeds said. “But it came out to everybody’s liking.’

Other projects completed in the Valley include the Tarzana Recreation Center and a restroom facility at Little Landers Park in Tujunga.

Major construction work is underway in Panorama City, where a onetime convalescent home is being transformed into the Mid-Valley Multi-Purpose Center. In North Hollywood, a former police station is being rebuilt as the North Hollywood Multi-Purpose Center. Renovation work is also going on at the Canoga Park Junior Arts Center and at Shadow Ranch Park in West Hills.

Most of the Proposition K work is still in the planning stages. In Arleta, a new child care center and new playing fields are planned for the Branford Recreation Center. Other parks on the Proposition K list in which work is scheduled to be done in the next few years include Encino Park, the Sepulveda Recreation Center in Panorama City, the Sunland Recreation Center, Reseda Recreation Center, Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Park Recreation Center and improvements to parks in Pacoima and Sun Valley.

Although the pace of the improvements may be daunting, Soboroff said he wants to get as many projects up and running as quickly as possible.

“There are going to be mistakes. But I’d rather have these kinds of problems than have no problems and do nothing,” Soboroff said. “We can handle it.”

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Costly opening

The Granada Hills Recreation Center, which was damaged in the Northridge earthquake, is scheduled to open Friday. Change orders cost $550,000, or 23% more than the original construction contract.