LOS ANGELES – Developers and civic leaders are trying to reinvigorate this city's languorous downtown with a pair of billion-dollar redevelopment projects brimming with condominiums, entertainment venues and hotels.
On the edge of the urban core, a more loosely organized effort is under way to restore the city's historic soul.
Los Angeles State Historic Park, which officially opened in late September, aims to highlight the early days of the 225-year-old pueblo that grew into the nation's second-most populous city – including remnants of the original canal that furnished water from the Los Angeles River to the first settlers.
Park officials hope to meld the 32-acre open space – a rarity in Los Angeles' densely developed center – with nearby historic buildings. The goal is a tourist draw that will invite comparisons to San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter as well as to Balboa and Old Town State Historic parks.
Downtown Los Angeles “is undergoing a renaissance,” said Ruth Coleman, director of the state Department of Parks and Recreation. “It's turning itself around in a really positive way. This park will be part of that trend.”
Some community activists also see the new park as a step toward creating a string of parks and landmarks, highlighting the city's multicultural beginnings and embracing a rehabilitated stretch of the Los Angeles River.
City and regional agencies also are working to improve pedestrian connections to the nearby El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, which includes Olvera Street and some of the city's oldest homes and commercial buildings.
State parks officials have selected San Francisco-based Hargreaves Associates as the design team for Los Angeles State Historic Park. Only when the design is final in about a year will the state have a firm cost estimate. However, parks officials expect to draw funds for the project from Proposition 84, a $5.4 billion water quality and natural resources bond passed by voters last month.
The new park will cover a broad swath of history, beginning with the Indian presence thousands of years ago. In 1769, explorer Gaspar de Portola became the first Spaniard to visit, ushering in the modern era, and the site subsequently became the terminus for railroads bringing thousands of people to Los Angeles to seek their fortune. Mexican, Chinese and Italian immigrants were among those who created enclaves nearby.
“This was the heart of Los Angeles for 10,000 years,” said Dianna Martinez-Lilly, a San Diego-based state parks official who's involved in the development of Los Angeles State Historic Park.
One of the most intriguing artifacts discovered so far is a large section of the zanja madre, the “mother ditch” originally built by Spanish settlers in the late 1700s to carry water to their village from the Los Angeles River.
The canal runs just outside the park's boundary along its northern edge. It has particular significance to a city whose growth has been fueled by a perpetual – and at times, some would say, ruthless – search for water.
Residents from the mostly low-income neighborhoods surrounding the park site – which was being used as a rail yard – battled to prevent it from being converted to industrial development. The parks department plans to keep the property largely an open-space oasis.
The site has knolls and a natural amphitheater, and a jaw-dropping view of the downtown skyline. There's also a jogging and biking track.
Department officials hope the park will expand over time to encompass historical buildings in an adjacent industrial area slated for redevelopment. If those plans materialize, Martinez-Lilly said, the park could evolve into something akin to San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter with a park next door.
“This will be a portal to launch people to other, nearby parks,” she added.
Robert Garcia, executive director of the City Project, a nonprofit group that focuses on parks, health and transit issues for low-income Los Angeles residents, said a pedestrian trail and bus route should link the park with El Pueblo, only a half-mile to the south, and another state park planned on the east bank of the Los Angeles River, about two miles north.
“They should not be treated as isolated, separate parks but as one continuous parkway system,” he said. But coordination among state, county and city agencies is tenuous, he said.
“Los Angeles is famous for forgetting its history, and (thus far) this area illustrates that tragically,” Garcia said.
Garcia's group is moving ahead with designing 15 interpretive panels to be placed along the Los Angeles River near the new park. And not far away, the regional Metropolitan Transportation Agency is planning a more pedestrian-friendly, “grandiose paseo” leading from Union Station to El Pueblo and from there to the Los Angeles Civic Center.
Amid all the activity, and despite his concerns, Garcia expressed some optimism.
“This is a wonderful opportunity,” he said. “Los Angeles is hungry for its history.”
