Real Value in Parks Workshop Comes After the Finish

Eric Richardson

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Last night a Downtown meeting was held for the Citywide Parks Needs Assessment, part two of a six part process to create a cohesive plan for the city's park system. The "Public Participation" phase includes several dozen of these workshops, scattered throughout the city.

After a very short presentation the public was broken into three groups and each was led through a series of questions. General questions about the parks system led to the typical complaints one would expect, namely that Downtown needs more parks and more green space. Even Gary Leonard took off his photographer hat for a moment, saying that the city's parks lacked imagination and bemoaning what had become of the imaginative Not a Cornfield site. Input was carefully written down on easel sheets, to be compiled later into a "Community Values Model."

The most compelling part of the meeting came after landscape architect Mia Lehrer finished up. Lehrer's group was largely made up of DLANC participants, and after she finished DLANC President Russ Brown grabbed the chance to tell those still around about opportunities the neighborhood council has to get involved in real projects Downtown. It seems safe to say that Downtown stands to see more real results from that process than it does from the city's multi-year planning effort.