Rockwood/Colton Park

By Chris Atencio

Contractors planted oak trees and palo verde plant material on the hillside. To prep the soil, crews scraped and turned the first 12 inches with machines then added standard amendments and gypsum in some areas where possible. The entire park is on an automatic irrigation system, which is controlled via an Alextronix Eneron weather based controller.

The City of Los Angeles Dept of Recreation and Parks took a blighted Los Angeles, California area and turned it into a pocket park for local families. Dubbed the Rockwood/Colton Park by the local citizens, the Proposition-40 funded project took two years to complete, while employing more than a 100-plus workers with trades ranging from a landscape contractor to masons, welders, concrete, plumbers, and electricians.

To make things challenging, the park's grade ranges from a 2:1 to 3:1 ratio. The landscape contractor added mulch and ground cover including Leymus, oregon grape and ceanothus to serve as the main erosion mitigation method.

The City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks (RAP) began the project in 2006 with a basic environmental clean-up of abandoned oil wells that were remnants from an era of oil drilling that dominated the area many years ago. This site has the historical significance of being where Edward Doheny discovered oil in Los Angeles in 1892, launching what came to be known as the California Oil Boom.

More recently, however, a long-time gang presence in the neighborhood hung as a dark cloud over the area. The building of the park represented a ''cleaning up'' effort by RAP staff and CD13 so that the local youth and families could take back their neighborhood and enjoy outdoor activities close to home.

Due to their weight, and the steep grade, the pre-cast Outdoor Creations concrete tables were craned in from the street. Worker poured in enough concrete to fill 20,000 square feet at a 4-inch depth, not counting the retaining walls. The concrete treatment was achieved by seeding the alternate radial bands with tumbled glass; then workers washed out the surface to expose more glass and aggregate. All the other areas are a medium-broom natural color.

As the site is where Doheny discovered oil in the late 1900s, not surprisingly, much of the soil was contaminated and two open abandoned wells had to be secured and sealed. Federal Brown Act funds helped pay for the extensive export and import, as well as the excavation needed to get the site ready for construction. Also two old houses had to be removed as well before crews could start construction.

Topography

The park takes advantage of the sloped topography of historic Pilipino town by creating several seating areas with different vantage points. At the top, workers constructed a picnic-area plaza with a view of the entire park; half way through the sloped terrain is a small overlook node with game tables. And, at the lowest elevation, a play area resides that features play equipment, seat-walls and a small plaza area with bench seating.

To top it off, the entire park is equipped with solar lighting, drought-tolerant ornamental shade trees and other plant material, all fed with smart irrigation.

The concrete paving at each plaza area was seeded with tumbled black glass as a tribute to its oil-discovery heritage. It also symbolizes the shedding of dependency on fossil fuels by using recycled materials, and in the case of the solar lighting, clean energy. Rockwood residents have a new gem in town to be proud of.

The Eagle Solar lights were mounted at the park crest, near the large canary island palm; the palm was the only thing saved from the original site. Additionally, landscapers planted more than 20 trees, ranging in sizes from 15 gallons to 36-inch boxed ones, as well as more than 500 drought tolerant shrubs, ranging in sizes from one to five gallons.

Contractors laid 1,400 square feet of red fescue hybrid Marathon II sod. The bench is a powder coated one from Playpower, which is bolted to the concrete.

Challenges Faced

The park is located on a challenging site, with more than an 18-degree gradient street terminating into a 1-percent-grade street. This created a multi-directional cross-grade configuration that converges at different points. The site's soil makeup also presented challenges. The entire site is hard clay, and its level of soil compaction and planting posed great difficulties, requiring longer time and harder efforts to complete.

Much of the major work consisted of shoring up neighboring buildings from collapse, as workers graded the site and installed retention structures for the new park. Inspections, permits and plan check timelines for these elements threatened the department's ability to meet the state due dates. However, due to collaboration and good working relationships between top city officials from different departments made fast-tracking these processes possible. In the last months the crews finally got the required permits and fast tracked most of the construction, having all the trades working at once.