‘Pocket Park’ Gives Touch of Green to Wilshire Center Neighborhood

Bimini Slough Ecology Park, with its tiny lip-shaped lawn and abundant boulders, interrupts the dense landscape of apartment buildings and strip malls with barely a sliver of green.

But many residents who live around Vermont Avenue and 3rd Street said they were thrilled to have a new park in their Wilshire Center neighborhood -- even if it’s a small one. Though forced to squint to see its charm, they said size did not matter as long as the park was a place they could take their children.

“It’s clean, and it’s safe,” said Rosa Gastulun, a mother of two who lives two blocks away. She visits other parks in the neighborhood infrequently, and with trepidation because of the presence of homeless people and drug dealers.

Bimini Park, which officially opened Thursday, rises on a long vacant lot in the shadow of tall apartment buildings and a grocery store parking lot.

Officials hailed it as the city of Los Angeles’ first “e-park.” Residents can borrow laptops from the next-door youth center, and browse the Internet through wireless technology while sitting under the shade of a tree.

A hundred years ago, when the neighborhood formed the western edge of the city, a large public bath with a natural hot spring sat where the park now stands. It closed in 1951.

Designed to re-create the ecology of the area 100 years ago, the 20,000-square-foot park includes indigenous plants, and bio-swale that filters toxins out of polluted storm water. A drip irrigation system will reduce water usage.

The neighborhood around Bimini Park is one of the city’s most densely populated areas. Many residents are recent Latino and Asian immigrants. There are 1,000 residents for each one-third acre of green space, in what officials said is a high ratio compared with other parts of the city.

“It’s not just restoring the land to what it used to be, but affirming the dignity of a whole community,” said Jeff Carr, director of the Bresee Foundation, part of a coalition of city and state officials that helped raise the $750,000 to build the park.

“Just because you’re poor, it doesn’t mean your kids shouldn’t have a place to play.”

Such “pocket parks” are a solution to the lack of open space in urban neighborhoods, said Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti, who represents the district.

Smaller, and often fenced in, they can be maintained by fewer people, and can even be managed by local residents. Because of their size, officials said, they tend to attract less crime.

“Every little park makes a difference, as long as it’s kept clean,” said local resident John Gonzalez.

He often takes his two children outside the city to play outdoors, but said gasoline and other costs made commuting to recreation space a hardship.

“For a young person, this little bit of green space is like Central Park,” Garcetti said.

But some residents disagreed. They said such a park would hardly make a difference in a neighborhood packed with people.

“What am I gonna do on that little patch of grass?” said Eric Brown, a grocery store clerk who drives his three children outside the neighborhood when they ask to throw a football around. When they stay in the neighborhood, they avoid the outdoors altogether, preferring indoor activities such as bowling and ice-skating.

“It’s like being in a desert, and someone pulls out a bottle of Evian to tease you,” he added. “That little grass patch is a travesty.”