Late one sunny November morning, I was exploring the west end of MacArthur Park when I came across a social worker looking for a client.
We started talking about shade trees and grassy slopes. Levitt Outdoor Stage, which hosts summer concerts. A soccer field where young people still gather. It offers beautiful views of the once-grand Westlake Theater building and the downtown Los Angeles skyline across the lake.
“This is a beautiful oasis in the middle of the city,” Willard Beasley said.
That’s what breaks your heart. Dating back to the 1880s and once a symbol of city pride, this 35-acre property has a lot of potential. It has also been the setting for films by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and for escape artist Harry Houdini’s lake-jumping stunt. In chains.
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However, its history is checkered and its beauty is flawed. Blight runs through the park and extends into the surrounding streets, with homeless encampments spreading in all directions. Similar problems persist in other parts of Los Angeles, but the Westlake neighborhood is also plagued by gang activity and a public display of the fentanyl crisis.
I asked Beasley if he thought the park could be saved.
“Yes,” he said. “But it will take a lot of effort.”
Several times over the past few decades, when conditions at the park deteriorated, restoration efforts were initiated by a diverse team of residents, merchants, public officials, law enforcement, and nonprofit rescuers.
Most recently, in early 2022, the park reopened after a $1.5 million renovation. Then-City Councilmember Jill Cedillo called the park “the front and back yards of so many families” and said, “I’m proud to reopen MacArthur Park Lakeside to make it a clean, safe, and secure place.” he declared.
However, these improvements did not hold up as the long-established cycle of parks being preserved and then lost again continued. A clean, safe and secure environment was replaced over the next year by an increase in homelessness, crime and drug activity.
The 1980s, when Adolfo Nodal, who ran Westlake’s Otis Art Museum, helped organize a successful neighborhood association that lobbied the city for public art projects, the Town Watch program, and improvements to lighting and other services. So was it.
Rescue workers saved many people from drug overdoses at MacArthur Park.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“We brought families to the park who wanted to be involved in something positive,” Nodal said. His book How the Arts Made A Difference chronicles that change.
But those gains were eroded by entrenched fissures, once again leaving MacArthur Park out of the hands of those who needed it most.
In his acclaimed book Rent Collectors, which chronicles the area’s violent gang wars and urban policing, Jesse Katz describes MacArthur Park as “the destructive energy that roars through Los Angeles.” No other place has struggled to bear the weight of so much trauma.” The daily struggles of peddlers and mostly Central American people who have lived with both hope and despair for decades.
But one of the many reclamation projects over the past years could be the blueprint for how to get the park back up and running.
The case took place in 2003 and involved a police chief, a civil rights attorney, a city council member, a deli owner and a tamale maker, among others. And it all started when a brash East Coast immigrant named Bill Bratton became chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and couldn’t believe the state of MacArthur Park.
Bratton grabbed Charlie Beck, a downtown Los Angeles captain who would succeed Bratton as chief in 2009, and transferred him to Westlake’s Rampart Division. The division was rocked in the 1990s by one of the biggest corruption scandals in LAPD history. Beck asked Bratton if he had any special plans, and the chief’s answer was clear.
“Please clean the park.”
Former Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck, pictured in 2011, was tasked with cleaning up MacArthur Park. On the left is then-Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa.
(Los Angeles Times)
Beck worked in the same area as a rookie in the 1970s, but years later, as he rose through the ranks, he became convinced that the LAPD needed to adopt a policing model centered on building community partnerships. did. He walked the grounds of MacArthur Park, took notes, and became convinced that “muscles alone” could not save the park.
“The lights weren’t working,” Beck recalled. “All the scenery was gone. The boathouse was a mess. The bandstand was boarded up.”
He contacted the Recreation and Parks Department, found a donor to install surveillance cameras on nearby buildings, installed signs listing prohibited activities, stepped up foot traffic, and identified drug-trafficking hotspots. It was cracked down on and the U.S. forestry authorities were hired. Authorities cut down trees, took away gang interlopers who took part in a peace march around the park, and seized stolen property, including shopping carts, which they stored in an abandoned boathouse.
A man loads a shopping cart across the street from Langer’s Deli near MacArthur Park in August.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Beck began visiting Langer’s Deli and Mama’s Tamales regularly, both of which have windows in the park, to check in with owners Norm Langer and Sandy Romero about neighborhood developments, complaints and strategies.
“I’d go there a lot and drink coffee or have a meeting with someone and look out at the park and let the soles of my feet know what I saw,” Beck said.
Romero hosts neighborhood meetings, recruits local clergy to the cause, helps park vendors threatened by gang members, and organizes a weekend festival that includes singers, dancers, and puppeteers. did.
“More families started using the park,” Romero said.
She said gang members didn’t like what was going on and sometimes came to her cafe to let her know.
“I just stood my ground and said, ‘Guys, you need to move your stuff somewhere else. This is going to be a family park again, and you can’t be here.’
Ed Reyes, a Westlake City Council member at the time, said nonprofit service organizations such as Calesen and El Rescate were key to addressing underlying socio-economic issues. He wanted to avoid simply pushing the problem into new regions without addressing the root causes.
Whether it’s dealing with neighborhood slumlords or convincing grandmothers and parents to involve their sons, who are “causing such havoc in the world,” Reyes has been working with staff and others. People “had to really dig deep and dig deep,” he said.
In less than a year, the 35 acres lost were recovered and returned to the park. Beck arranged for the lake to be stocked with fish and invited neighborhood children to participate in a fishing derby.
“The Los Angeles Police Department took the lead in transforming MacArthur Park from a crime bazaar to a picnic area,” said Connie Rice, a civil rights attorney who worked with Bratton on police reform and oversaw Beck’s efforts to clean up MacArthur Park. said.
“We need to implement all strategies,” Rice said, because no single strategy is effective when the crisis is this serious. The “whole ecosystem” of causes and conditions must be addressed.
And we must continue to do so, especially in cities that are notorious for not tackling the biggest problems, and in areas populated by poor, undocumented immigrants who struggle to survive and avoid confrontations with law enforcement and gangs. Must be.
Civil rights lawyers believe MacArthur Park can be saved again with the right approach. “Anyone can lead, but it takes sustained effort,” Connie Rice said.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Despite all the good work done in 2003, Beck eventually moved on, Romero became ill and was away from the park project, and problems gradually returned.
Rice recently looked at the park and thought, “Oh my god, it’s even worse than when I first started.” But she believes that with the right approach, it can be saved again.
“Anyone can lead, but it takes sustained effort,” she says.
It may be tougher today than it was in 2003, given that the fentanyl epidemic has turned parks and their surrounding areas into open-air museums of overdose horrors. While some small steps have been taken by City Councilor Eunice Hernandez and others, struggling communities are seeing a massive infusion of rehabilitation services, more medical interventions, city and city government efforts, along with law enforcement efforts. County cooperation and all types of housing and social services are needed. Released by Beck in 2003.
But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Reyes said that when he first met Bratton at the park 20 years ago, he pointed out not only drug dealers and people shooting people, but also families throwing blankets on the lawn.
“This contrast, this conflict, this collision of lives, where you have young working families just trying to get some air and some relief, and next to them there are people who are in a downward spiral – I I wanted him to see that,” Reyes said.
I was thinking about that idea while walking in the park. The park had a children’s play area fenced off for several months after the fire damaged it.
It is a sad sight, a symbol of the surrender of the local government.
And this is where Mayor Karen Bass, City Councilman Hernandez and incoming Los Angeles Police Department Commissioner Jim McDonnell come together to learn from past successes and develop a plan that works today.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
