Virginia Park Working Group Debates
Pools and Parking Lots
Carolanne Sudderth
Mirror Staff Writer
Swimming pools
and parking dominated the discussion at the Thursday, July 29, meeting
of the Virginia Avenue Park Working Group.
Landscape Architect Julie Eizenberg brought drawings
she’d developed from ideas suggested at the previous meeting.
The Group is exploring the most efficient means of
incorporating 2.9 acres acquired by the City over the last ten years.
The City has allocated $5.5 million to enlarge and revamp the park.
Residents of the
Pico Neighborhood made it clear they want a pool of their own.
Although Santa Monica’s municipal pool is just across the street at
Santa Monica College, several Pico area women said they were reluctant
to send their children across busy Pico Boulevard. “How old would
they need to be before you’d feel safe?”
“Twelve,” one responded through a translator, “and
even then, we’d worry.”
In September, construction will begin on a new
$6-million municipal pool complex. Though it will remain on the SMC
campus, it will be relocated -- from the interior of the campus to the
corner of Sixteenth Street just south of Pico. It will house two
pools: a 50-meter pool for diving and competition; and a smaller,
shallower pool for instruction and recreational use.
Some of the City representatives seemed to feel that a
swimming pool at Virginia Park would be redundant. Karen Ginsberg,
Assistant Director of Cultural and Community Service, said that the
municipal pool is open for recreational swimming between noon and 2:30
p.m. daily during the
summer. Santa Monica teams have practice every morning, and the pool
is used for instruction in the afternoons.
Residents suggested that a Virginia Avenue Park pool
be located near Pico
Boulevard just off 21st Street. At 20 feet by 80 feet, the pool
suggested by Eizenberg would be “smaller than the municipal pool,
but bigger than a residential one. It is certainly a pool that can be
used for neighborhood uses,” she said.
Eizenberg suggested an alternative would be a
temporary pool like the one currently used by Los Angeles Unified
School District. The pool is portable, (L.A. Unified moves it every
two weeks) and at $20,000 , the pool would cost considerably less than
a permanent installation.
“Whether the pool is 20 by 20, or 20 by 40, or 20 by
200, you’re looking at $200,000 to $250,000 [in maintenance costs],
if you’re looking at a county health department quality pool,” she
said.
Commissioner Frank Schwengel, chair of the Recreation
and Parks Commission, said he was concerned that Pico neighbors might
find their pool time at the municipal pool usurped by the city or the
college. He favored the pool’s being implemented in stepped phases
and suggested looking into using a temporary pool before $500,000 was
spent on a permanent installation.
While no one questioned retaining Saturday’s Farmer’s
Market on the corner of Pico and Cloverfield, the 100-space parking
area it requires was a different matter.
Members of the Working Group and people in the
audience objected to using parkland for parking three hours a week.
Working Group member Tara Zaccagnino said. “College
students are already parking on streets around here, and I think they’re
going to devour it.”
Eizenberg confirmed the problem. “Students are
already leaving their cars in the park’s interior lot,” she said.
Students unable
to find parking spaces in SMC’s notoriously over-crowded parking or
unwilling to participate in the $50-per-semester lottery, are taking
their cars to residential streets—though more and more streets have
resorted to permit parking.
Sunset Park resident Duke Kelso said, “We spent two
years trying to solve the problem the college generated, and I see it
coming right back into the park,” he said.
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