Amazing Design for Potrero Pedestrian Crossing Submitted for Clas Project

The pedistrian bridge would be reminsent of a dolphin.

Kaylie Ward  grew up in Pacific Palisades and attended Santa Monica Catholic High School. She played club volleyball at UCLA, while attending college.

After graduating, she took a temporary job at the Bay Theater in Caruso’s Palisades Village when it opened. She was eventually promoted to manager.

On January 7, she closed the theater and sent everyone home. A few weeks later she was laid off.

Instead of looking for a new job, Ward decided to go back school and learn about architecture, “so that she can assist us in some way if we decided to rebuild,” said her dad Parris, who with is wife Jennifer and Ward’s brother Brendan saw their home near the Village burn during the Palisades Fire.

Ward started taking classes at Santa Monica College in architecture.  One of her class projects was to design a pedestrian bridge that uses certain design concepts such as biophilia and biomimicry, focusing on creativity rather than feasibility.

Students were also tasked with researching a specific location they believed the community would benefit from such a project, and to design a memorial for some sort of local event that would be associated with or adjacent to the bridge.

“Naturally she worked on a design for the bridge that will eventually be built across PCH from George Wolfberg Park,” Parris said. “The bridge she designed has the arch of a breaching dolphin and an adjacent memorial that lists all the Palisades streets and neighborhoods affected by the Palisades Fire.”

For her project, Ward gave a brief history of the pedestrian bridge. “The Potrero Canyon Park Development Project was first proposed in an Environmental Impact Report in June 1985. The proposal included a permanent pedestrian bridge connecting the Palisades Recreation Center and Will Rogers State Beach, giving safe beach access to the Pacific Palisades Community. Forty years later, there is still no bridge.

“The George Wolfberg Park was completed in December 2022, and the Potrero Canyon Pedestrian/Bicycle Bridge Project entered into the environmental planning and design phase in late 2023, with construction and completion projected for 2027-2030.

“The recent fire’s in the surrounding community have likely delayed this project even further as funds are focused elsewhere, but in a time of unrest and uncertainty, it seems like an ideal project to boost morale: designing a bridge that honors and celebrates the community, memorializing the tragedy of January 2025, and fulfilling a decades long crusade to provide safe beach access to Palisadians,” Ward wrote.

(Editor’s note: If the design phase is still ongoing this bridge design is inspiring and unique and should be considered. It would provide a lovely and memorable sight to anyone on Pacific Coast Highway.)