Hollywood Freeway cap park inches forward

US Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) has agreed to request the $5.85m necessary to begin prelimary studies and planning for the park. Though this is a tiny droplet in comparison to the estimated $950m necessary to build the park, supporters say it is a crucial step. The park, thought by many to be a pipe dream since its conception in 2006, would comprise 44 acres of parkland on a "cap" constructed over the freeway between Hollywood and Santa Monica Blvds. The park is seen as a much-needed addition of open space to an area of the city that has only .005 acres of parkland per resident. Friends of the Hollywood Central Park, the non-profit founded to get the project off the ground, says the majority of the money will come from private foundations. It is one of 2 cap parks planned for the Hollywood Freeway.

Source: Los Angeles Business Journal

Santa Monica plans second freeway cap park

Santa Monica City Council approved a proposal to cap an additional portion of the 10 freeway on Tuesday. This second cap park would be over the freeway slot between Ocean Ave and 4th St. The decision comes just months after another park was approved over the Santa Monica Freeway between 14th and 17th Sts. But that project is still in early feasibility stages. This latest development brings the number of LA area freeway cap parks under consideration to 4 - the others over the 101 in Hollywood and Downtown.

City leaders hope a park bridge over this section of the freeway would help create a stronger pedestrian connection between the Third Street shopping area, the pier, and the newly revitalizing civic center. The freeway segment is already conveniently "cut" about 20 ft below ground, but is still exposed to the open air. At Ocean Ave, the freeway briefly tunnels below Ocean Park and the entrance to the pier, before emerging again as the Pacific Coast Highway along the beach. By extending the tunneled portion of the freeway, both parks might also benefit from larger green spaces and greater pedestrian access. The park would also be convenient to the Expo light rail station planned for Colorado Ave and 4th St.

The approval allows spending of ~$300,000 for a feasibility study and ~$3m for initial engineering. Local planning and engineering firm AECOM is charged with conducting the preliminary study and will present its findings to the council within 3 months. The park has been a pipe dream of the city's since at least 1999.

The added land, which is in the super-prime center of Santa Monica, would be more valuable than the cost of capping the freeway. Besides the obvious mitigation of the visual and aural impacts of the freeway, and the shifting of transportation priority from freeways to public transit, projects like this are significant case studies in the frontier of "land creation." As suburban sprawl has lost its appeal in the aftermath of recent economic and environmental events, developers are looking to disprove the old adage 'you can't build more land.' Freeways occupy huge expanses of our built environment, often in inefficient ways. Where freeways have been dug below ground, or where they pass through expensive land, there can be innumerable benefits from capping or reclaiming that ugly and wasteful infrastructure. Santa Monica's experiments should be watched closely by civic leaders and developers everywhere.

Source: Santa Monica Daily Press

Weary of the 10, Santa Monica Proposes to Bury Freeway Under Park

The City of Santa Monica last week authorized a petition of $250,000 to the state for the feasibility study of covering I-10 between 14th and 17th streets with a park. The intention of the move is to add more green space to the city, mitigate the presence of the freeway, and bridge some of the neighborhood rifts created by the introduction of the freeway in 1964. The section of freeway in question is bounded by Memorial Park, a small municipal park, to the north, and the Woodlawn Cemetery to the south.

New freeway construction was extremely controversial in the US in the middle half of the last century, as it replaced gigantic swaths of homes and sometimes entire neighborhoods. But the US Interstate system was relentless in its goal of linking the nation's cities. Support for the futuristic network of roads was often even enthusiastic, especially during wartime. But the City of Santa Monica has long resented the presence of the freeway in its city limits - it brings high-speed outsiders to the upscale beachside community.

Sooner or later the city has to realize that, despite its 90,000, it sits at the core of the nation's second biggest metro area. The freeway is an important connector of the city's business district and Pac Coast Hwy with central LA and the rest of Southern California. But anyway, hiding the freeway under a park isn't a bad idea. It will create a large contiguous greenspace with its approx. 7 added acres. It will create a "land bridge" that will be much more pleasant for pedestrians to cross than a typical overpass. And it will begin to break up the dominating repetitiveness of the "grayscape." But it might be expensive. The City of Los Angeles has determined the cost of a similar park over the 101 in Hollywood to be around $1 billion.