Is Hollywood "Park Poor"?

A quick follow up to my post yesterday about the report that Congressman Xavier Becerra has agreed to request $5.85 million in Federal funding to pay for environmental review work, engineering and design plans, and planning and entitlement applications for the Hollywood Freeway Central Park Project.

In that post, when opining about the merits of the Hollywood Freeway Central Park Project as a park project, I said:

Again, I'm not arguing that just because a project is good for businesses and developers that it is a bad idea. Hardly. However, I'd argue that if the City was really serious about creating parkland in underserved communities it would be lobbying for funding for parks in areas like Westlake, Koreatown, South Los Angeles, the Central Valley, Palms, Wilmington, and in communities along the LA River. Hollywood, comparatively speaking, is not park poor.

Today I realized that, even though this is the internet, I should back up my statement that Hollywood is "not park poor" with some facts and figures.

However, before I jump into that, lets talk about this quote from that same Los Angeles Business Journal's report about the need for green space in Hollywood:

As the redevelopment of Hollywood continues, the need for green space becomes more apparent. While all of Los Angeles has 0.012 acres of open space per resident, one of the lowest ratios in the state, Hollywood has far less at only 0.005 acres per resident.

First off, let me say how I love that the LABJ reported the amount of open space on a per person basis to make the figure seem incredibly low. Most park agencies report park acreage on a % of parkland per 1,000 persons basis. Translating the LABJ's figures to that standard measure would yield figures of 12 acres of open space per 1,000 residents in "all of Los Angeles" and 5 acres of open space in Hollywood per 1,000 residents.

For comparisons sake, the City of Los Angeles' 2009 Citywide Community Needs Assessment Report counted 9.73 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents in the City of Los Angeles. See Page 68 here (.pdf) of that report. The City's Needs Assessment doesn't breakdown park acreage for the Hollywood community, so I had to do that little bit of analysis myself. When I did I found that Hollywood has roughly 20.32 acres of public parkland per every 1,000 residents. My analysis and commentary is below.

PARKLAND IN HOLLYWOOD

The community of Hollywood, as defined by the Department of City Planning's Hollywood Community Plan Area (CPA), covers approximately 25.2 square miles-- bounded on the north by the CA-134 Freeway, the Cities of Glendale and Burbank, and Mulholland Drive; on the east by the I-5 Freeway and LA River; on the south by Melrose Avenue and Rosewood Avenue; and, on the west by the Cities of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood.

The estimated (est. 2008) total population of Hollywood is 224,811 persons. Hollywood's  Median Household Income (Census 2000) is $54,439 and approximately 23.3% (Census 2000) of the total population lives in poverty. Note: This data was provided by a report generated by the Department of City Planning's Demographics Research Unit.

Within Hollywood there are, at least, 17 public parks. I say at least because there are a variety of publicly owned open spaces (controlled by the City, the DWP, LA County, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and the Mountains Recreation & Conversation Authority) that aren't included in this analysis because I wouldn't classify them as "parks" per se.

That said, below is a chart of the 17 public parks, along with their size in acres:

Park Name	Park Size (Acres)
Barnsdall Park	14.59 acres
Buena Vista Park	8.71 acres
De Longpre Park	1.37 acres
Dorothy J. and Benjamin B. Smith Park	0.49 acres
Fairfax Senior Citizens Center	0.38 acres
Griffith Park	4,281.73 acres
Hollywood Recreation Center	3.12 acres
Las Palmas Senior Citizens Center	1.14 acres
Lemon Grove Recreation Center	3.87 acres
Lexington Avenue Pocket Park	0.17 acres
Poinsettia Recreation Center	6.29 acres
Rosewood Park	0.11 acres
Runyon Canyon Park	136.76 acres
Seily Rodriguez Park	0.34 acres
Trebeck Open Space	62.0 acres
Wattles Garden Park	47.58 acres
Yucca Community Center	0.97 acres
TOTAL	4,569.62 acres

As you can see from the chart above I calculate (at least) 4,569.62 acres of public parkland and open space in Hollywood. Given Hollywood's population of 224,811 persons, that works out to roughly 20.32 acres of public parkland per every 1,000 Hollywood residents.

Now, how does that compare to some of the other areas of the City I mentioned in my post yesterday? See the chart below:

Los Angeles City Standards (per the City's Public Recreation Plan)			10 acres of parkland / 1,000 residents
Hollywood Community Plan Area	224,811 persons (est. 2008)	4,569.62 acres of public parkland	20.32 acres of parkland / 1,000 residents
Westlake Community Plan Area	120,398 persons (est. 2008)	~50 acres of public parkland	0.41 acres of parkland / 1,000 residents
Southeast Los Angeles Community Plan Area	274,519 persons (est. 2008)	~110 acres of public parkland	0.40 acres of parkland / 1,000 residents
Palms - Mar Vista - del Rey Community Plan Area	122,363 persons (est. 2008)	~42 acres of public parkland	0.34 acres of parkland / 1,000 residents

Again, Hollywood, comparatively speaking, is not park poor. If the City is looking to invest money to develop parks in communities that desperately need them then Hollywood isn't the place.

Now yes, the bulk of Hollywood's parkland is located in Griffith Park and in the Hollywood Hills, and away from the densely populated flats. And yes, the bulk of Hollywood's parkland is not located within convenient walking distance of most Hollywood residents nor truly accessible to them via public transit. However, what that really seems to indicate to me is that Hollywood is more in need of better access and transportation to its parkland-- not that the community (as a whole) is park poor. Hollywood's parkland is poorly distributed, relative to its population centers, but the community is not park poor.

If we really want to address the need for parks in Hollywood we (1) need to develop small parks and open spaces at sites located directly in the most densely populated, park poor neighborhoods, (2) need to develop safe routes for pedestrians and bikers to get to parks, and (3) need to improve our public transit system to increase transit access and service frequency to parks.

Now, does that mean the Hollywood Freeway Central Park is a bad idea? No. But it does call to question the argument that the Hollywood Freeway Central Park, as currently conceived, is the PARK project that Los Angeles, or Hollywood, needs the most-- particularly when $5.85 million in Federal funding is up for grabs.

Speaking of those millions of dollars in Federal funding-- I hope that Congressman Xavier Becerra knows that large portions of the Westlake CPA and the Southeast Los Angeles CPA are located in his district (CA-31). Combined, those two communities have almost 400,000 residents and less than 160 total acres of parkland. If he is really looking to hand out millions of dollars in funding for "parks" in "park poor" areas then he should be focusing on those communities and not Hollywood.