A New Regional Park in Long Beach?

This Saturday, led by City Councilman James Johnson and Larry Rich, Sustainability Coordinator for the City of Long Beach, myself and others had an opportunity to visit a hopeful site for a future park on the underserved West Side of LB.  Behind the cemetery on Willow between California Ave. and Orange, surrounded on four sides by the City of Signal Hill, is a 55 acre parcel of city owned land.  The geology of the park has made for an interesting ecology with an equally interesting history of human land use.  Sitting on a fault line, the land has buckled to form both a high promontory and a small canyon with remnants of a riparian corridor. Rain falling in the San Gabriel mountains and soaking into the earth miles to the north once reemerged from an artesian spring here.  The spring was developed into a well that served the fledgling city to become Long Beach.  The presence of oil seemingly spelled its demise when drilling operations eventually contaminated the well.  Later the willows were cut down and the creek paved over in a misguided attempt of nearby residents to shed their image as 'Hickville'. Today its a reservoir that stores runoff from the 405.  Maintenance ceased some time ago, and as the reservoir silts up, willows have begun to recolonize even the hardbottom reservoir.  Our group spotted large coopers hawks perched in stands of eucalyptus on the slope above us.

Today there is an amazing opportunity to create a regional park where residents are in great need of open space in an area with an emblematic history, interesting topography, and potentially vibrant ecology.  Its time people got behind this park and worked together to develop a cohesive vision that preserves history, provides unique outdoor recreational opportunities, and enhances habitat and watershed functions.

Our trek ended with a quick design charette hosted by Sharon Gates from Long Beach Park, Rec, and Marine.  The community had  a chance to draw their own vision for the park.  Representatives from Long Beach Community College were also there to talk about the potential for developing job training programs that would benefit the park and the community.

This land that shows resilience despite having being dumped on with everything from freeway runoff to harbor dredgings seems poised to make a comeback.