LandNotes

TPL staff and workers at Pine Avenue Park - TPL / Carolyn Ramsay

Earlier this week, I drove out to Maywood, 30 minutes south of downtown L.A., where TPL is building a community park.  Maywood is tucked into the vast gray mid-section of the city– dominated by semis roaring to and from Los Angeles Harbor, the country’s largest port.

I turned off a six-lane industrial highway into a neighborhood of bright stucco bungalows, colorful gardens, and people waving to each other from pickup trucks.  It was like entering a secret world. In 20 years of working in journalism and politics in Los Angeles, I had never heard of Maywood  .

With me are TPL staffers  Tori Kjer and Robin Mark,  both landscape designers.  This is the first park they’re building.  And while TPL often has conserved land for parks in Los Angeles, this is the first park we are building in Los Angeles County, so we’re all very excited.

When we get to the park site on Pine Avenue, Chihuahuas yap at us through a chain link fence.  A rooster is crowing and several chickens are cooing from inside a nearby garage. Construction workers are already at work.  Their pickaxes ping each time they hit the ground–the soil is that hard. I’m glad I’m not one of those guys.  This lot that has been empty for 90 years.

Future Pine Avenue Park site - TPL / Carolyn Ramsay

As the workers dig, Tori and Robin look at park blueprints with the contractor, engineer, mosaic tile artist and Mathew Lysne, a consulting landscape architect. They discuss changes in grade, drainage issues and the thickness of the tile on a winding path that has been designed to look like a California king snake.

In 2009 we began park-building process by asking the community what they wanted in a park.  Lots of people turned out and spoke up at the community meetings.  There are only 2 other parks in all of Maywood, a city of 27,000 people, and they’re both crowded beyond capacity. The median income in the city is only $37,724.   The work is being supported by state and foundation grants.

I look forward to coming back to Pine Avenue as the park develops and sharing with you photos and an account of our progress.

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Editors Note: Carolyn Ramsay is the Los Angeles program director of The Trust for Pubic Land.