One morning on a sunny November day, I was exploring the west edge of MacArthur Park when I came across a social worker looking for a client.
We even talked about shady, grassy slopes; the Levitt band hosting summer concerts; the football field where the youth gather; and a beautiful view across the lake towards the once grand Westlake Theater building and the LA skyline.
“It's a hot spot in the middle of town,” said Willard Beasley.
That's what breaks your heart. There is great potential in the 35-acre property that dates back to the 1880s and was once a symbol of municipal pride, as well as the setting for Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton movies and the stunt when escape artist Harry Houdini jumped into the lake. in chains.
California is about to be hit by a wave of aging people, and Steve Lopez is riding it. Her column focuses on the blessings and burdens of growing up — and how some people challenge the stigma associated with aging.
But history is tested and beauty is stained. Blight runs through the park and bleeds into the surrounding streets, with homeless camps on all sides. Similar problems run deep in other parts of Los Angeles, but the Westlake area is also burdened by gang and gang activity. fentanyl problem in clear public display.
I asked Beasley if he thought the park could be saved.
“Yes,” she said. “But it will take a lot of work.”
Several times in the past few decades, when the conditions of the park worsened, restoration efforts were launched by various groups of residents, merchants, government officials, law enforcement agencies and non-profit rescuers.
Most recently, in early 2022, the park reopened after a $1.5 million renovation. Then the Councilor of the city Gil Cedillo called it “a front yard and a backyard for many families” and announced“I am proud to reopen MacArthur Park Lakeside to make it cleaner, safer and more secure.”
But in a repeat of the long-established cycle, where the park is saved and then lost again, that development has not caught on. Cleanliness, safety and security allowed for more homelessness, crime and drug activity in the following year.
That was the case in the 1980s, when Adolfo Nodal, who ran the Otis Art Institute in Westlake, helped organize public art projects, a city watch program and a local council that successfully lobbied the city for better lighting and other services.
Rescuers have saved many from drug overdoses in MacArthur Park.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“We filled the park with families who wanted to be involved in good things,” said Nodal, whose book “How the Arts Made A Difference” documented the change.
But those gains were wiped out by the rise of the crack epidemic that took root, and once again, MacArthur Park was lost to the people who needed it most.
“No other place in Los Angeles is full of its subversive power or labors through such trauma,” wrote Jesse Katz of MacArthur Park in his critically acclaimed book. “Berenti Collectors,” which chronicles the region's violent gang wars, retail shake-ups, and the daily struggles of the majority of Central Americans who have lived through decades of hope and despair.
But there is, in one of the many renovation projects of the past years, a possible blueprint for how to raise the park again.
It happened in 2003, involving a police captain, a human rights lawyer, a councilman, a deli owner and a tamale maker, among others. And it all started after a no-nonsense East Coast transplant named Bill Bratton became LAPD chief and couldn't believe the state of MacArthur Park.
Bratton grabbed an LA city captain named Charlie Beck, who would succeed Bratton as chief in 2009, and transferred him to the Rampart Division in Westlake — a division rocked in the 1990s by one of the LAPD's biggest corruption scandals in history. Beck asked Bratton if he had a particular agenda in mind, and the chief's answer was clear:
“Clean if— park.”
Former LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, pictured in 2011, was tasked with cleaning up MacArthur Park. On the left, then-Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa.
(Los Angeles Times)
Beck had worked in the same area in the 1970s as a rookie, and became convinced years later as he rose through the ranks that the LAPD needed to adopt a community relations policing model. He walked the grounds of MacArthur Park, took notes, and became convinced that the park could not be saved “by muscle alone.”
“The lighting wasn't working,” Beck recalled. “All the landscaping was gone. The boathouse was a mess. The bandstand is closed. “
He reached out to the parks and recreation department, got a donor to pay for a surveillance camera on a nearby building, put up signs showing prohibited activities, put up foot traffic, busted drug hot spots, and hired the US Forestry. The Department will cut down the trees, bring in the gang members who participated in the peaceful march around the park, confiscate the stolen property, including the shopping carts, and keep them. in an abandoned boathouse.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Beck began frequenting Langer's Deli once Mom's Tamaleswhich had windows to the park, and surveyed its owners Norm Langer and Sandi Romero about local developments, appeals and strategies.
“Many times I would just go there and look at the park when I was drinking coffee or having a meeting with someone, and then I would look back at what I saw,” said Beck.
Romero, who held neighborhood meetings, persuaded local pastors to do this, and helped park vendors threatened by gang members, organizing weekend festivals that included singers, dancers and puppeteers.
“Many families were just starting to use this park,” said Romero.
Gang members didn't like what was happening, he said, and occasionally came by his shop to vent.
“I just stood up and said, 'Guys, you need to move your things to another place.' This will be a family park again, and you won't be able to be here.'
Ed Reyes, Westlake City Council attorney at the time, says non-profit service groups like Carecen and El Rescate were important in helping to address socioeconomic issues. He wanted to make sure that he didn't just push problems into new areas without solving the problems.
Reyes said that his workers and others “must dig deep,” whether they are taking on neighborhood shacks or defeating grandmothers and parents to take part in the sons “who are causing all this damage out there.”
In less than a year, 35 lost hectares were recovered he returned to the park. Beck arranged for the pond to be stocked with fish and invited local children to a fishing derby.
“The LAPD led the transformation of MacArthur Park from a crime scene to a picnic spot,” said Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney. in collaboration with Bratton on police reforms and oversaw Beck's efforts to clean up MacArthur Park.
“You have to do the whole megillah” when the problem is as deep as it is, Rice said, because no single strategy can work. You have to deal with the “whole nature” of causes and conditions.
And you should always be, especially in a city known for its poor record of solving major problems and home to many poor undocumented people struggling to survive while trying to avoid run-ins with the law and gangs.
The human rights lawyer believes that MacArthur Park can be saved again, the right way. “Anyone can lead it, but it takes constant effort,” Connie Rice said.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Despite all the good work done in 2003, Beck eventually moved on, Romero got sick and left the park job, and slowly, the problems returned.
Rice recently saw the park and thought, “Oh, jeez, it looks worse than when we started.” But he believes it can be redeemed again, in the right way.
“Anyone can lead it, but it requires continuous effort,” he said.
It may be more difficult today than it was in 2003, in retrospect fentanyl diseasewhich turned the park and surrounding areas into an outdoor museum of the horrors of drug use. Some small steps have been taken by the Councillor Eunices Hernandez and others, but the poor area needs more rehabilitation services, more medical intervention, city-state cooperation and housing and social services of all kinds, and the kind of law enforcement initiative that Beck established in 2003.
But that doesn't mean it can't be done.
Reyes told me that when he first met Bratton in the park two decades ago, he pointed out drug dealers and people shooting, but also families throwing blankets on the lawn.
“This contrast, this conflict, this conflict of lives where you have young working families who are just trying to breathe in the air and have some kind of relief, and next to them, you have people in a critical situation – I wanted him to see that. ,” said Reyes.
I thought about that idea as I walked through the park, where the children's playground had been fenced off for months after being damaged in the fire.
It is a sad incident that stands as a symbol of the municipality's dedication.
And it's a place where Mayor Karen Bass, Councilwoman Hernandez, and outgoing LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell should come together, learn from the past, and create a plan that works today.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
Source link
