Rec and Parks still hadn’t received a report on the “new gym” structure from Bureau of Engineering at the February 18 meeting.
The Palisades Fire gravely impacted the Recreation Center, destroying not only the tennis building, the large gym and some of the field dugouts, but also the landscaping. What was left? A 1950s brick building without heat, wifi or ADA bathrooms and a playground that was completed in the 1980s and had never been updated.
The Palisades fire killed 12 people, and destroyed 6,837 structures, making it the tenth-deadliest and third-most destructive California wildfire on record and the most destructive to occur in the history of the city of Los Angeles.
A Palisades Park Advisory Board Meeting was held on February 18. Members learned that after the fire, the park’s basketball program had moved to gyms at Crestwood and Oakwood.
Park Advisory Board member Bob Benton said the baseball teams are going to have a season, playing at Cheviot Park, and the annual pancake breakfast is being held March 1.
The park needs to be among the first things reopened and quickly, but how?
According to L.A. City Rec and Parks General Manager Jimmy Kim and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ emissary Stephen Soboroff, through FEMA and people donating.
Before the quarterly PAB February 18, Circling the News had sent a February 6 query to Kim. “Readers want to know what’s happening with the Palisades Rec Center–and what is happening with the “new” gym that burned. Will it be torn down and rebuilt?
“The community understands that the rec center will be used for construction permitting – but wonder how long that will go on.” (It currently houses DWP.)
There was no response from Kim.
At the PAB meeting, many eagerly expected Kim and Soboroff to provide answers and a timeline.
Kim, who only had a half hour for this meeting with Palisadians, expressed his sympathy. “We’re still working on developing an active restoration,” he said, and noted that the Bureau of Engineering was supposed to look at the large gym to see if it needed to be demolished or if it could be reconstructed.
Regarding the tennis center and the maintenance lot (which also burned), “We’ll replace it with a refab building.”
After he gets a report from the BOE, Kim will meet with the Haggerty group, a disaster recovery contractor, based in Illinois, hired by Mayor Karen Bass. “To see what the reimbursement dollars might be,” Kim said. (The terms and money of the Haggerty contract were not revealed to Los Angeles constituents.)
PAB member Rob Weber noted that “we don’t want to build back the same gym.”
“Our intent is to relook at tennis and reinvent and relook at the spaces,” Kim said, noting that prior to the fire about $883,000 of Quimby funds had been allocated to replace the non-compliant ADA restrooms and that there was $25,000 for pickleball. In an earlier CTN story, Pickleball USA came to the Rec Center and said there was no outside space far enough away from residences to comply with the City’s noise ordinance.
The Palisades Rec Center is owed a little over $1 million in Quimby Funds from the City, and PAB members wondered why it would cost more than $800,000 to replace/update to bathrooms in an existing structure. It has been hoped that some of the Quimby money could go to replacing the playground.
Member Rick McGeagh, who had just worked on a project where bathrooms were installed in similar circumstances, with a $250,000 cost. “I’m concerned about the Quimby funds, we can’t lose that money,” McGeagh said.
“I can’t tell you why the cost came in as it did,” Kim said. “We have to go through specific contractual agreements.”
Then, he speculated that the RAP might get reimbursement from FEMA and “there are a lot of donors reaching out. It takes a lot of funds to reinvent an old building.”
Soboroff chimed in and said that City money was restrictive and that replacements might be more efficient with donations. He recounted raising money to construct the playground in 1986.
This plaque was placed on the side of the 1950s Rec Center, thanking people who donated to the playground in 1986.
Benton asked, “There are donations coming in from all over the city, where are they going?”
Kim suggested that they go to the L.A. City Park Foundation and that people could put Palisades in the donation area. And that money would be allocated to the Palisades. He then left the Zoom meeting.
Pacific Palisades was a “cash cow” for the city, not only did Palisadians raise money to build a gym, fields and a library, they also paid some of the highest taxes in the city/county.
If one allows the cash cow to burn, the city can’t expect the same donations. Now Palisadians are paying to replace homes, cars, clothes, furniture and other belongings – and have to pay rent to live in other areas from Redondo Beach to Capinteria.
Some members wanted to know about soil testing, and Traci Parks field deputy Arus Grigoryan said that Traci had made a February 14 motion to have it done at the Rec Center.
Soboroff stayed to answer questions. He said, “Bring this park back fast. When the park reopens the Palisades reopens.”
Weber asked, “What can you and the mayor do to kick RAP in the ass and get it going?”
Soboroff responded, “The city does not respond to finger pointing.”
Cindy Simon said, “What can you do to help us?”
Soboroff said, “Be positive and work with the system.”
It seemed most people were looking for specifics of what had been done, what the plans were and if there was a timeline. All seemed to be missing from city representatives’ comments.
Weber at the end of the two-hour meeting said, that everyone had heard Soborff say that “opening the park is the most important thing.”
He added that “leadership to rebuilding the park will have to come from the Park Advisory Board.”
The group is now going to meet monthly to plan and try to have the city give them real dates to questions such as: When will DWP leave? When will the evaluation of the large gym happen?
Another PAB member said, “What we should be asking Soboroff is ‘you said this park was the number 1 priority.’ Help us build the playground.”
The board concluded that “We can’t wait for Rec and Parks to do an assessment that could take years.”
The Doge team needs to come in and investigate why the parks committee thinks 800K is a reasonable amount to perform a 250K project tops to renovate the gyms bathrooms. More waste, more corruption more incompetence!
Is the comment above about doing soil testing at the Rec Center referring to just the park soil or for private homeowners to get their soil tested there? Also did George Wolfberg park burn?
I’m just curious why there wasn’t insurance on this to cover the cost of rebuilding
This is frustrating on numerous levels and includes many of the reasons I’m struggling with the question, why remain in the Palisades when we’re under the jurisdiction of the City of LA? Thank you, Sue, for pointing out several of them. Donations to rebuild a park on City property that was built once with donated funds? In a City, County and State with among the highest taxes in the Country? It’s offensive. The cherry on top is that my wife and I went into the Palisades late Thursday morning, two days after the fire began. We went to look at the bocce courts and rec center. The new gym appeared to have survived largely unscathed. While we were standing there we noticed a flame growing on the roof of the gym. Fortunately, there were several firemen there and a water truck. No fire engine, just a water truck. Everyone was very nonchalant as they maneuvered the truck closer to the gym. After watching for a few minutes, we figured they had it under control and we left. For whatever reason, we can all see what happened after we left. I’ll assume it was a lack of resources and not malpractice on behalf of the firemen on site that allowed this to happen. It’s a shame to say the least.
Jill,
Potrero Park burned–it was a brush fire, so I’m not sure that testing for it is required.
Sue
Steve, I saw the same thing all day and all night: completed nonchalance of firemen. Indeed the ones on the beach doing nothing seemed to be enjoying the coffee klatcb going on down there. On the 13th, with spotfires going on all over the place I observed a group of a down fire posing on the bluff for a group photo. They actually SMILED!