Potrero Canyon Park Project to Resume

Returning to where construction and landscape demolition trucks first entered Potrero Canyon in 1987, L.A. city officials held a ‘new’ groundbreaking ceremony last Thursday morning. Officials announced that the final push to complete the controversial infill of Potrero, once a wild, deep canyon, and create a public park will begin this month. The estimated completion cost is $30 million. The passive recreation park, with a hiking trail from the Palisades Recreation Center down to Pacific Coast Highway, could be finished in five years’provided the 19 city-owned lots and homes along the rim are sold in a timely fashion, according to Department of Public Works spokeswoman Tonya Durrell. This spring, three houses (at 15233, 15237 and 15265 DePauw St.) and three lots (at 15241, 15253 and 15261 De Pauw) will be sold at auction to fund the project’s upcoming costs. (The sale of two city-owned houses on Alma Real raised $4,620,000 in November 2008). ‘This area [Pacific Palisades] is perceived as affluent by the City, so the City looks to us for funds,’ said District 11 Councilman Bill Rosendahl, whose office fought successfully to create a Potrero Canyon fund trust to hold all proceeds from the city’s real estate sales along the rim of Potrero, rather than to have these funds going into the city’s general fund.   ’This park benefits not only the 11th District, but the region,’ Rosendahl added.   Dirt hauling is slated to begin after a temporary traffic light is placed at the canyon entrance across from the Bay Watch Lifeguard station. According to Durrell, the exact date will depend on Caltrans’ approval and the signal installation.   The first year of construction will be spent filling more of the canyon the canyon at the base of the mouth below the 200 block of Alma Real (below the Elkus and Pardee residences, whose owners are in litigation with the City). About 173,000 cubic yards of soil will be used (some of which is already stored in the canyon) to raise the bottom of the canyon about 20 feet. A small portion of the stockpile that abuts houses along Alma Real ‘will be left in-place as a buttress to provide lateral support to the east slope,’ said Durrell. ‘The remaining portion will be removed and re-compacted as part of the future grading contract for that area.’   Community Council member Barbara Kohn, who attended the ceremony, said she came to help celebrate the resumption of construction. She recalled attending a 1984 community meeting when the city presented its plan for filling in the canyon (as high as 80 feet from the canyon floor) and creating a park, at a total estimated cost of $3 million.   Rosendahl recognized Potrero Canyon Community Advisory Committee Chairman George Wolfberg for his leadership and the committee’s park plan that was presented to the city in 2008, while construction was on hiatus. ‘We had ongoing meetings with hundreds of people,’ Wolfberg said, noting that the committee’s purpose was to present the City with recommended uses and goals for the park. ‘He [David Card, a landscape designer and fellow member of the committee] was hammered from right to left, but we developed a plan,’ Wolfberg added. ‘It is really a great day,’ Wolfberg said after the ceremony. ‘The committee met for four years to come up with a plan. Now that the City is moving ahead with the project, it is extremely gratifying.’