An open park, open to all

“It must be made a place of rest and relaxation for the masses, a resort for the rank and file, for the plain people.”

“Colonel” Griffith J. Griffith, 1896

--

Like many native Angelenos, I have a deep memory of Griffith Park. The smell of leather and droppings at the pony rides. Running high in the hills under the buzz-hum of the power lines. Peering through the Zeiss telescope at the miracle of starlight piercing our smoggy heavens. All these were both public and private experiences, at once shared with other park-goers and intensely personal.

And like many Angelenos, I was forlorn after the May 8 fire, which seemed to cruelly target the most popular areas: the leafy heights of Dante’s View, the eerie cages of the Old Zoo picnic grounds, the trail that zigzags up to the craggy top of Bee Rock. The city’s Department of Recreation and Parks cordoned off the more than 800 burned acres, leaving untold numbers of hikers, picnickers, equestrians, bikers and bird watchers locked out of a public space they’d made intimate.

As with any disaster story, the pols and the media looked for a redemptive coda and found it in earnest Councilman Tom LaBonge pointing at tiny shoots of green in the ash, miraculously pulling water out of the marine layer in this record drought year.

And yet a closer look at the politics of the park’s recovery and planning process is decidedly less inspiring. At stake is the future of our version of Central Park (in terms of sheer size, Griffith, at 4,218 acres, dwarfs the 843 acres in Manhattan), the largest open and public space in a city that worships private property. L.A. is a place of walls and fences and gated communities -- and we are park poor for it. According to the City Project, a nonprofit that advocates for more public space, L.A. has the fewest acres of parkland per resident among major urban areas nationwide. And, predictably, access is determined by ZIP Code: Low-income neighborhoods average 0.3 acres of parks per 1,000 residents, compared with1.7 acres per 1,000 in more affluent areas.

A draft of a new Griffith Park Master Plan was unveiled in 2005 to howls of criticism from a small group of stakeholders, among them many environmentalists who see the park essentially as an “urban wilderness” meant for hiking and horseback riding. The document, known as the “Melendrez draft” for the landscape architecture firm that produced it, proposed some commercial development, and adding more parking, transit and recreational sites, such as baseball diamonds and soccer fields. While parts of the plan looked like crass offerings to developers (including a “pleasure pier” on the Los Angeles River), others, including a sports complex on the reclaimed Toyon landfill in the hills above the 134 Freeway, seemed to address the needs of the city’s burgeoning immigrant classes.

Trouble is, the people who need parkland have been largely absent from the Griffith Park Working Group, a panel convened by LaBonge and the parks department two years ago to draw up alternatives to the Melendrez draft. Its last monthly meeting, Aug. 6 at the park headquarters auditorium, seemed to be a typical gathering -- a healthy contingent from the Sierra Club as well as nearby neighborhood councils and homeowners associations. LaBonge, seemingly with nothing to gain politically, pointedly addressed the issue. “Look at the faces of all of us,” he said. “Are these the faces of everyone in the park on a Sunday afternoon?”

They certainly were not. If they had been, U.N.-style translation headsets would have been needed. Perhaps the most significant lack of “diversity” was one of economy and geography: The attendees were nearly entirely middle or upper-middle class, and several own some of the city’s most attractive real estate. Although the working group should be lauded for its commitment (it has toiled in obscurity for two years with virtually no resources), what was supposed to be a democratic process, imagining the next quarter-century of the city’s premier public space, resembles a parody of noblesse oblige.

The history of Griffith Park is a faithful mirror for the history of the city. Over the decades, its crowds have been drawn from just about every culture and class -- a curious, sometimes tense mix. When my father was growing up here, the Griffith Park pool was segregated (as were all city pools), with signs announcing the one day of the week that “blacks and Mexicans” could take a dip. On Memorial Day in 1961, a riot began at the merry-go-round when a black youth was accused of getting on the ride without paying; the LAPD ultimately blocked all park entrances and loudspeakers blared orders to disperse.

But over the generations, the people of Los Angeles have made the park their own. They claimed it with Communist gatherings, be-ins and gay-ins (as well as the sexual underground scene immortalized by “City of Night” author John Rechy). More recently, there have been countless drum circles, informal soccer matches and un-permitted cotton candy vendors.

Perhaps what made Griffith Park a great public space in the many decades before the fire can never be captured in a bureaucratic exercise like a master plan. Despite two previous plans (1968 and 1978), in reality, the park has been only lightly legislated. Development was relatively modest and democratic, maintaining the hills as wilderness and using the flatlands for myriad purposes and constituencies -- the zoo, the Autry Museum, the golf courses.

I walked out of the auditorium, leaving the working group to decide whether it was “diverse” enough. I went to the merry-go-round, which was reopened a few weeks after the fire. At the perimeter of the parking lot, there is still a fence to keep people off the charred hillsides. Every few feet along the chain-link fence hang signs in English and in Spanish, but they do not match. In English, they merely apprise visitors that the area is “temporarily closed” for their “safety.” In what appears to be a clerical mistake with powerful symbolism, the signs in Spanish read “Propriedad Privada . . . Entrada Prohibida” (Private Property, Do Not Enter).

The “for the masses” mandate with which Griffith J. Griffith bequeathed the land for the park is clear enough, and that ideal should be the basis for any plan. In a city where immigrants and the working class are largely excluded from our public life, it will take an unprecedented effort to achieve a truly inclusive process. But for starters, how about holding public working group meetings in every City Council district? (This would mean finally giving the working group the resources it needs to do its job.) Otherwise, our premier public space does indeed run the risk of becoming, in practice, private. Allowing some people in and keeping others out. Like a gated community.