Friends of Spring Street Park

Community Replanting Day

Along with the "upgrade" of Spring Street Park the Department of Parks and Rec and Friends of Spring Street Park are partnering to hold a “Community Clean-up and Replanting” at the Park.

The entire community will be invited out to help with the clean-up/replanting and be part of the upgrade. Some of the activities that have been talked about are: helping to build the pet-potty area, planting new foliage and laying new grass.

The planting is an opportunity to meet your neighbors in the community and contribute to the park that we all know and love. The enhancements that we will make together will help to maintain the beauty of the park, hopefully keeping the grass green, and the planters free of people and pets, while giving pet owners a place for the pets to potty before joining families and friends who are enjoying themselves in our green space. A community member who attended the Dept of Park and Reps meeting to discuss the redesign said, “The community has such a sense of ownership of the park, it’s just natural that they be part of the replanting.”

The date hasn’t been set for the Community Clean-up and Replanting and details are still being worked out but we will post to the website and email out when we have more info. In the mean time we’ve created a page on the website for the event. http://friendsofspringstreetpark.com/communitycleanup

Spring Street Park Upgrade

Spring Street Park is a very new and much-needed amenity to the neighborhood. It was officially opened to the public on June 17, 2013 by Antonio Villaraigosa. It is one of the parks created as part of the 50 Parks Initiative program developed under his leadership as the Mayor of Los Angeles. The 50 Parks Initiative was developed to address the perception that Los Angeles is "park poor." Downtown is park poor.

In just the first few months of the park's opening, many of us witnessed the heavy use and rapid deterioration of such a much-needed amenity in Downtown that took many people and many years to create. Therefore, the Department of Recreation and Parks and the Bureau of Engineering examined how the park was being used and decided to make some design changes to preserve the various elements that make Spring Street Park unique and to ensure that the park is an enjoyable destination for those who live, work and visit the Downtown Historic Core. Friends of Spring Street Park was invited to a meeting in January 2014 to listen to the proposed design changes and provide feedback.

Design and operational changes being proposed, or already implemented, are:

A fence around the playground area to protect the children from potentially aggressive dogs and bicyclists.
An enclosed dog area within the park for dogs and their owners to play to protect them from potentially agressive children and bicyclists.
Reseeding the grassy oval lawn with a hearty, quick recovering grass variety. In addition, creating two other grassy areas within the park where plantings currently exist.
Placing mulch and decomposed granite along the outer perimeter along Spring Street as a designated poo and pee area before entering the park.
Putting in place low, decorative fences to protect and preserve the planting areas within the park.

Friends of Spring Street Park continue to seek funding so that park rangers can enforce the existing rules of the park to protect and preserve the unique features of the park for everyone's enjoyment. With your tax-deductible contribution, you can join our collective effort to preserve Spring Street Park! And if you cannot contribute, please do your part to preserve and maintain the limited green space currently available to us in Downtown. Thank you!

Children's Play Area Fence

Friends of Spring Street Park is happy to report that the Recreation and Parks Department has completed the addition of fencing to help secure the Children’s Play area and make its use exclusive to kids and their parents or caretakers.

This is the first of a number of initiatives that are being undertaken to improve the park experience for all. Watch for additional changes coming soon.

SSP won a Downtowners of Distinction award

ssp

Meeting Held to Reverse Spring Street Park's Decline

Details: Written by Steven Dornbuch, FSSP

On the morning of Thursday, January 9th, Spring Street Park's (SSP) original client / landscape designers, members of LA City's Bureau of Engineering's Architectural Division, shared redesign ideas with invited guests. The purpose: to mitigate the negative impact of park misuse and over-use. Chief among the problem areas is the thrashed elliptical Grand Lawn. Health concerns are another issue. Reseeding, while a welcome "breather", is not enough.

Patti Berman, our Friends of Spring Street Park's leader, pointed that our little pocket park could not survive with only the rules governing parks much larger ---even accounting for negligible rule enforcement at the moment. While we await changes (not to mention, full time Rangers), Richard Fisher, landscape architect, presented several redesign options. Everyone had their say. Mike Shull, Interim Director of Recreation and Parks, spoke of his commitment to not let SSP slip further downhill. Mr. Shull pledged to implement two or more mitigation ideas, over the coming weeks.

Don't be surprised if we see: 1) a fence protecting the playground 2) a small mulched dog "area" outside the park, located on Spring St. plus a large dog "area" accessed from inside the park, along Harlem Pl. 3) two planting beds replaced by turf 4) addition of knee-high fences to prevent foot traffic through planting beds. Rec. & Parks Dept. will foot the bill. Needed improvements will be fast-tracked. A community (re)planting event will be a welcome chance for the neighborhood to work together.

Most present already enjoy close working relationships. FSSP attendees: Patti Berman, Lihui Ke, Nathan McCusker and Ryuko Ozawa. Steven Dornbusch represented The Rowan's Park Committee. B of E attendees included Mahmood Karimsadeh, Richard Fisher, and Jane Adrian. Mike Shull led a delegation of Park managers. Community leaders Bill Stevenson and Greg Fischer added to the frank discussion and collaborative spirit of this working session.