Among the design elements for phase two of West Hollywood Park is an unusual multi-level playground. The colors of the bright rubber safety surfacing were inspired by the native California poppy.
Image: Rios Clementi Hale Studios

The West Hollywood City Council approved the phase two designs for West Hollywood Park on February 2, 2015. New park elements will include fitness gardens, dog parks, playgrounds and special events areas when phase two of the project is completed in 2018.

The approximately $90-million project is designed by Rios Clementi Hale Studios, and LPA Inc., the architect responsible for the new Aquatic and Recreation building in the park.


The first phase of the 6.59-acre park, designed by Johnson Favaro and completed in 2011, encompass the West Hollywood Library, a parking structure with rooftop tennis courts, basketball courts, a lawn and tree-lined promenades.


For phase two, Los Angeles-based Rios Clementi Hale Studios designed varied outdoor settings to satisfy myriad needs of this diverse community.

"We juggled a multitude of desired, but seemingly conflicting, programmatic uses for the park," explains landscape architect Samantha Harris, ASLA, LEED AP, a senior associate at Rios Clementi Hale Studios. The community wanted active sports fields; quiet urban respites; a large dog park; safe spaces for children's play; native gardens; and exercise equipment"?uall within a relatively small open space. The design also has to accommodate large civic events.

Phase two of the park renovation will add additional flora, and open and programmed community spaces. At the heart of the park is the "flexible meadow," a multipurpose low-maintenance turf area created by reconfiguring and expanding the existing lawn. Large specimen trees will be preserved to maintain intimate areas, open to pathways and incorporating raised seating berms to provide views of the meadow. A multilevel children's playground is also on tap.

Design details for two dog parks totaling 12,000 square feet are forthcoming. Mexican sycamore canopy trees, decorative pedestrian lighting and contemporary site furnishings will line the ADA-accessible promenades that encircle the meadow and extend to the new Aquatic and Recreation building.


A sheltered area of the park, Robertson Commons, will incorporate a picnic area, dramatic tree lighting and artist Phillip K. Smith III's "Parallel Perpendicular" installation. Gardens with exercise equipment and resilient surfacing will be located along the promenade for outdoor workouts; public restrooms are an additional amenity.

A new entrance to the park near San Vicente Gardens will preserve a mature Sycamore tree, while creating a vestibule to the National AIDS Monument. Rios Clementi Hale Studios is working with Australian artist Daniel Tobin of Urban Art Projects to integrate his design for an AIDS monument.

Vivid colors of native, drought-tolerant and low-maintenance plantings will create a living quilt to provide an overall identity and distinctive character within the gardens and activity areas. Blue and purple plants will be part of the shaded microclimate of Robertson Commons, while the active garden area around the Aquatic and Recreation Building entry and grand stairway will beckon with bright red and pink flowering plants. The playground will present an Adventure Garden of deep greens. The sunny, dry hillside of the gateway area around San Vicente Gardens will be landscaped with yellow and orange plantings.


The park will conserve water through a high-efficiency irrigation system with a weather-based irrigation controller. Turf areas will be irrigated with high-efficiency rotors, and all shrubs and ground cover plantings will be watered with drip irrigation. Where possible, rainwater will be captured from the building and paved surfaces, and collected in a cistern for reuse on site.


West Hollywood Park Project Team, Phase Two
-Landscape Architect: Rios Clementi Hale Studios: Mark Rios, FASLA, FAIA, Samantha Harris, ASLA, LEED AP, Brent Jacobsen, ASLA, LEED, Brooks Mikkelsen
-Patrick Keegan, Designer

Building Architect
-MEP/Structural/Civil Engineer; Lighting; Environmental Graphics: LPA Inc.

-Project Manager: Heery International

-IT/Media: Waveguide Irrigation: Sweeney Associates

-Arborist: Jan Scow

-Artist: Daniel Tobin/Urban Art Projects