When the new Arroyo Seco Regional Branch Library opened in 2003, the Highland Park building was landscaped with a new garden featuring native and drought-tolerant plants. That garden, however, has fallen into neglect, prompting the Highland Park neighborhood council to hold a clean up and replanting day this Saturday, Feb. 5. It’s a first step in providing some overdue maintenance that the library lacks funds to perform. “The Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council were told much of the original plantings are simply not there any more,” said neighborhood council director Janet Dodson. “They are presumed to be stolen or vandalized. It’s current sate is appalling.”
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What happens when the city lacks the money or interest in taking care of public property? In Mount Washington, neighbors have raised cash and worked up a sweat to clean up and maintain a public stairway and a traffic island in the northeastern part of the neighborhood. Albert Winn, a photographer and teacher, has spearheaded efforts to landscape the hillside surrounding the Oneonta-Olancha Stairway. Paula Sirola, meanwhile, worked with neighbors to tear out the asphalt and landscape a traffic island – known as the Jessica Triangle - at Jessica Drive and Cleland Avenue. It’s not easy taking on such project. The DWP at one point wanted to tear up the Jessica Triangle garden to install a new sewer line. Winn took a tumble down the steep hill near the stairway and has struggled to get city help. Still, earlier this year, more than $600 – much of it in $5 amounts – was raised by neighbors to pay a gardener to help maintain the Oneonta-Olancha Stairway and Jessica Triangle. What’s so special about these two spots that finds neighbors spending extra time and money? Winn explains:
“The stairs and the triangle are wonderful neighborhood assets. The triangle makes a lovely entrance to our neighborhood. The stairs are a wonderful place to exercise, meet other people, and see the view. The stairs act as public meeting place in the same way that a square or park does in other cities. Both places also offer an opportunity for neighbors to get involved in a community project that directly affects them, and for which they can see tangible results.”
Click on the link below to read a Q & A with Winn about these neighborhood DIY projects:
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On Tuesday readers weighed in on what they want to see on a vacant, triangular lot in Echo Park. Perhaps a little inspiration can be found in Silver Lake, where this coming Saturday residents will dedicate Parkman Triangle Park. Volunteers backed by city grants designed, built and landscaped what was once a triangular patch of concrete and popular dumping ground at the corner of Parkman Avenue and Silver Lake Boulevard. The Parkman Triangle is more of an “urban lounge” than park, said the principal designer, Silver Lake resident John Southern. It’s a place “where walkers hang out for a few minutes, get some shade, and then move on,” according to a press release. The dedication and ribbon cutting ceremony is scheduled to begin at 11 A.M.
EGP News reports that a small but determined group of Boyle Heights residents have shut down a popular weekly rave party in a Clarence Street warehouse that flooded the neighborhood with noise and scantily-clad party goers. One woman told EGP:
“They don’t dress like this where they live,” the woman said. “Their parents don’t know where they are. “ I like music,” she added. “But this to me is just noise. You don’t hear any music. All you can hear is boom-boom-boom.”
With the Clarence Street rave party shut down, residents said they were going after other noisy venues.
Lisa Baca Sigala wants a new set of wheels. But she’s not interested in a big SUV or energy sipping hybrid. Instead, Baca, an Echo Park Library volunteer, has her eyes set on a sky-blue, all-steel Buffalo Booktruck. It does not go very fast but it can carry up to 400 pounds of books, which would make life much easier for volunteers during book sales and other events held by the Echo Park Library Community Group. But the Buffalo Booktruck costs about $400, and it’s one of the many items and services that the library group wants to purchase to support the branch. So, on Saturday, the Echo Park Library Community Group will be holding a Summer Book Sale to raise the enough money to form a nonprofit – or 501C3 – corporation. Operating as a nonprofit, said Baca, would allow the group to apply for bigger grants to pay for a fleet of Buffalo Booktruck as well as to fund arts and music programs, support the library’s computer lab and knitting club and start a gardening club.
“We need to become our own long-term, sustainable, stand-on-our-own-two-feet nonprofit force dedicated to championing the needs of the Echo Park Library,” said Sigala by email. “When the Echo Park Library Community Group gets their 501 c 3 nonprofit status, we can raise funds in larger grant amounts than $10 – $50 memberships or 25 cents” book sales.
The Summer Book Sale begins at noon.
The Silver Lake residents competing for a $50,000 grant to build a garden at Micheltorena School attracted 1,100 votes in an online contest. All those votes, however, still fell 66 short of what was needed qualify as a finalist. But an email sent out by The Micheltorena School/Community Garden Team said the competition revealed widespread community support for the school and the garden idea. Now, the team members have launched other efforts to finance the garden project, including a fundraiser next Thursday at Gobi restaurant, which will donate 20% of the night’s food proceeds to the garden. “What this challenge did was galvanize our effort, make our plans known to the community, and allowed you to communicate your enthusiasm for this project,” said group said in an email to supporters
The Micheltorena School / Community Garden Team will also be setting up a website an d plans to staff a table at this Saturday’s Silver Lake Farmer’s Market to answer questions about the project.
More than 700 volunteers will flood into Cypress Park Saturday morning to paint and landscape schools, clean up tagging and paint a mural as part of L.A. Works Day. The day-long event – which draws on volunteers recruited from major companies – has in years past focused on schools. This year, however, L.A. Works Day will focus on a neighborhood. The neighborhood selected, Cypress Park, also happens to serve as the home for L.A. Works, the nonprofit that organizes volunteers year around. “The project … consists of three neighborhood schools [Aragon, Loreto and Nightingale] , removing graffiti from store-fronts on the main Figueroa corridor, and painting a community mural on the side of the local coffee shop, Antigua,” said spokeswoman Christie Ly. L.A. Works already has enough volunteers for Saturday but has invited the public to an afternoon concert and resource fair on Loreto Street near Figueroa Street.
The dome atop the four-story bell tower of the Echo Park United Methodist Church looks fairly small from the street. But Walter Elmer knows different. During the past two days, the 76-year-old Echo Park resident (pictured in the middle), Alex Busing (at left) and Mark Phillips (right) spent several hours perched high above the corner of Alvarado and Reservoir streets giving the dome a new coat of gold colored paint. The dome rises about eight-feet high and is flat on top, said Elmer, who found himself standing on that dome – secured by a rope – to apply three gallons of exterior semi-gloss paint, a shade called Marigold, with a roller. He used a small, curved ladder to climb part way up the dome and then used a rope tied to the cross at the top to help pull himself up. While he was up there, Elmer also gave the cross a coat of white paint. The crew also installed four flood lights.
Elmer, who has been a church member since 1960, has helped paint the dome before but can’t remember the last time he was up there. He just knew he wanted to get the job done before the weather heated up. “There is a nice breeze up there,” Elmer said. “You got a nice view, too.”
Volunteers completed their eighth and final work day on Sunday at the Parkman Triangle, a patch of green space created out of a once barren section of asphalt at Parkman Avenue and Silver Lake Boulevard. Silver Lake residents Ara Babaian and John Southern spent more than two years working on the project, which is now 98% complete. Said Babaian:
“We have enjoyed great responses from people driving by who honk at us in approval, and some who stopped to ask how we did this so they can replicate it in their neighborhoods. We also spoke with people walking by (some who have lived in Silver Lake for 50 years!) who expressed their appreciation of our collective efforts. That was very rewarding for all of us.”
A dedication ceremony is planned for the summer.
Top photo by Leon Kaye/ bottom photo by Ara Babaian
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