Potrero Canyon Park is a Go!

By JOHN HARLOW and DEBORAH STAMBLER

After three decades of environmental confusion, political chicanery and broken promises, the long-awaited park at Potrero Canyon is finally coming into focus—and it is adventurous, green and maybe best of all, already paid for.

Detailed blueprints revealed at the last Pacific Palisades Community Council on Thursday, Oct. 28 suggest that hikers could be traversing riparian woodlands between the Palisades Recreation Center and the Pacific Ocean in the summer of 2019.

And yet, as always with Potrero, there is one more hill to climb: in this case, city engineer Robert Hancock, who can afford to be frank as he retires in January after a heady decade on the project, warned it’s the state transport agency: Caltrans.

The city has already asked Caltrans for “encroachment” permits to work from a Caltrans area off the Pacific Coast Highway abutting the canyon.

The agency asked more questions that could cause additional delays.

Furthermore, Caltrans has not yet announced whether it will erect a new red light on PCH so that Caruso Affiliated can move 122,000 cubic yards of dirt from its Palisades Village site down Chautauqua to help fill and level the proposed park.

A last-minute appeal by Palisadians against this plan was dismissed at a city hearing on Tuesday, Oct. 25.

That 10-week truck odyssey, which has raised fears of traffic nightmares and sinkholes on Chautauqua, is expected to start later this month.

If the red light is not installed, then Caruso trucks will take longer routes down Chautauqua into Santa Monica to turn around and return empty up Temescal Canyon.

The dirt itself will be “wetted” to minimize dust and checked for toxicity levels by city engineers at the Caltrans site before it is used to landscape the canyon, Hancock said.

These are the problems.

The potential rewards and pleasures of a low maintenance “passive park,” a dream that dates back to 1985, excited even cynics at the PPCC meeting.

Hancock said that the $22 million budget is now in place, unless the city tries, as in the past, to syphon it off elsewhere, following the sale of city-owned homes on the canyon rim.

But Hancock did admit that one element of the vision, an $8 million bridge connecting park and beach over the PCH demanded by the California Coastal Commission for its blessing, is now envisaged sometime “after the park is largely finished.”

David Kaplan, who represents Via Mesa/Bluffs and The Huntington on the PPCC, expressed concern that this bridge would attract the homeless from the beach into the park, but was reassured that the park’s gates—two, or possibly three—will be locked at night.

A green picture was vividly painted by Mike Sherrod of the RRM design consultancy.

There will be a spring, pumped up from a PCH water collection point, filtered in gravel beds near the Rec Center and bubbling down the center of the canyon.

There will be three ocean overlooks and paths through two green zones—sage and salt-resistant on the higher lands and beech and walnut closer to the spring.

There will be 1,300 trees.

But the city confirmed on Tuesday morning that an extra 120 oaks, expected to be donated from a Coastal Commission worksite, will no longer be coming.

An extra 25 parking spaces will be built at the rec center to accommodate visitors expected at the 33-acre park.

And at the end of the journey, Sherrod predicted, with its rich environment of scrub, trees and fresh water, it will resemble Solstice Canyon, a popular picnic and hiking spot in Malibu. For that he won applause from councilmembers, some of whom finally believe it might just happen.