Rendering courtesy of the City of Long Beach.
NOTE: This is an abridged version of a story that originally appeared in LA Streetsblog. To read the unabridged version, click here.
Back in April, former director of Long Beach Park, Recreation & Marine Phil Hester sat in front of a bunch of urbanerds and bicyclists, pedestrian-oriented folks and designers, and discussed an idea that is needed on a vast community level: the 2002 RiverLinks projects. RiverLinks would vastly use the underused L.A. River by connecting the west sides of Districts 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, and 9 to the river via biking/ped/green utopia.
Councilmember and mayoral hopeful Robert Garcia wants to reinvigorate and update the 11-year-old RiverLinks project by not only including some of his own bold proposals (remember his idea to adaptively re-use the Shoemaker Bridge?) but also largely mimicking Mayor Eric Garcetti’s own reclaiming of the River by calling on Long Beach to partner up with Los Angeles.
Garcetti, no more than two weeks ago sought some $1 billion from the feds for River revitalization in a trip to Washington, D.C. The $1 billion is in addition to the roughly $200 million set aside to restore a massive section of the northern part of the LA river to make way for kayakers, hikers, bird-watchers, cyclists, and other appreciators of nature. Garcetti even scored 15 minutes with Obama but given the House’s perpetual cutting of federal spending along with the Army Corps massive list of awaiting-funding-projects (which total $60B), hopes for federal funding are slim.
According to Garcia’s logic, the fact that Long Beach is home to the river furthest down its stream makes the stakes greatest for the city. And the proposal to update the RiverLinks project and put focus on the river was met with an affirmation from the council, as the resolution—co-sponsored by Councilmembers Suja Lowenthal and Al Austin—was unanimously approved yesterday.
“The LA River has long been one of our region’s most significant environmental challenges,” Garcia said in his agenda item. “The LA River flows through Long Beach and empties into our harbor, often collecting waste from upstream cities. Historically, the Long Beach portion of the river had been underutilized.”
The Long Beach stretch of the river could provide hundreds of acres of much-needed park space in a city which has a shoulder-shrug of a number when it comes to park space per resident.
Citywide, Long Beach has about 5.2 acres per 1,000 residents. Even worse, when we examine the Westside—precisely where the LA River sits in Long Beach—we hit depressing numbers: 1 acre per 1,000 residents. That’s less than a football field of park space for every thousand people. The more affluent Eastside, on the other hand, has 16.7 acres/1,000 residents, far beyond the legal definition of a Healthy City, which stands at 10 acres of park space per 1,000 residents.
“The LA River still carries snowmelt from the Santa Monica Mountains, just as it did 200 years ago, but it has been neglected throughout the region,” Garcia continued in his resolution. “Residents wishing to engage in recreational activities along its banks or in its currents will find many obstacles[.]“
Garcia will host Reclaim the River community forum this upcoming Saturday at 11 am at the Jenny Oropeza Community Center in Cesar Chavez Park, located at 401 Golden Avenue.