Hundreds Attend Palisades Recreation Center Rebuild Community Meeting

Draft Designs of the Project Were Presented; Public Comment Taken

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

It was standing room only in the small gym at Palisades Recreation Center as community members and stakeholders attended a meeting Tuesday evening, October 7, to hear about and provide feedback on draft designs for the rebuild of the rec center.

The 90-minute meeting included representatives from the city of Los Angeles—including the Department of Recreation and Parks—Pacific Palisades Recreation Center Park Advisory Board, and philanthropic partners Steadfast LA and LA Strong Sports Foundation, formed by JJ and Chelsea Redick, Charles and Jenna Jackson, and Kylee Kilgore.

The rebuilding of Palisades Recreation Center, which had buildings and areas destroyed (including the large gym, tennis center and maintenance building) or damaged in the Palisades fire, will be funded, redesigned and rebuilt by a public-private partnership announced on April 10.

“I want to get this thing built in about a year,” Steadfast LA Founder Rick Caruso said during the meeting. “This team at Gensler and SWA are so passionate about it, they’re so into it, and so the timeline that I’ve given them—and we may miss it by a little bit, but I hope not—we’re going to start in January and then reopen the next January.”

Gerdo Aquino, CEO of SWA Group, a landscape architecture, urban design and planning firm, detailed the draft site plan, including the “green canopy” of trees, which form “the foundation of this entire open space.”

“We’re talking about the Palisades,” Aquino said, “a very beautiful, green, topographical place, and the park should reflect that kind of character. This is your park. It should be familiar to you now and in the future.”

He spoke on the topography, with paths throughout the rec center, designed to “emphasize connectivity” to ensure users can “go from one destination to the next, seamlessly, throughout the entire park.”

The draft site plan includes the same main entrance as was there previously, but “better than it was,” with a “proper drop off at the front door” of the proposed new gym building and a second drop off space closer to Alma Real Drive to help alleviate “clusters of parking.”

Elements that will remain in their place but receive various upgrades include the tennis courts, baseball fields, maintenance yard, bocce courts and Veterans Gardens.

The west side of the park is where “much of the new program will be,” according to Aquino. Two basketball courts will remain, with a design for a “Pali hub” space between the courts and new gym as a “flexible lawn” with seating. North of that would be a “new children’s play area,” with “more functionality.”

The design also includes plans for a 100’ by 160’ “multi-purpose field” for U-10 games. In an area Aquino described as an “underutilized swale” would be a “multi-function” lawn for different events and activities.

Steve Chung spoke on behalf of Gensler, detailing the design for the new gym building space, which, as proposed, takes what was previously the small and large gyms and combines programming into one building.

The building includes a lobby, as well as two high school basketball courts with “appropriate safety clearances,” meaning “10-plus feet behind the baselines and enough space in the sidelines.” There are bleachers on either side of the two courts, designed to hold about 150 people, Chung said, and a scoring table.

There would also be indoor pickleball courts, multi-purpose rooms and a set of restrooms that open to both the indoor space and outdoor play areas, which Chung described as “easy to secure” and “easy to maintain.”

At the start of the meeting, Recreation and Parks General Manager Jimmy Kim said they want this to be “an open process” and “have accountability.” He said feedback given will “guide refinement.”

“This rec center is the community’s rec center, it is our rec center,” Palisadian JJ Redick, head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, said, later adding: “I just want to help. I want to be very clear on that. I want what you want.”

Speaking on behalf of the park advisory board was Chair Andrew Starrels.

“The plan for revitalizing the rec center that Steadfast and LA Strong Sports have proposed is truly visionary,” Starrels said. “It checks virtually all the boxes that users have expressed to the PAB as what the park needs, and it does so with a plan that is creative, expressive and reflects the talents of the truly world-class designers that Steadfast and LA Strong Sports have assembled in a philanthropic mission.”

The alternative, Starrels explained, would be doing a city-sponsored “like-for-like” replacement of what was lost at the rec center: “To me, and, I believe, to the community, what’s proposed tonight is a far more preferable alternative.”

The meeting included about one hour of public comment from constituents who spoke largely in favor of the park design as proposed, with ideas to add things like a skatepark, dog park and underground parking, and for the team to consider avoiding the use of artificial turf. Members of the Pacific Palisades Historical Society, Randy Young and Jeff Ridgway, spoke on the potential of saving the small gym, with Ridgway suggesting it be considered for use as a senior center.

“I look at this design—I want to say this really quick—there is no perfect,” Palisadian Bryan Whalen, a longtime coach at the rec center, said during public comment. “Better done than perfect, because perfect is in the eye of the beholder and there are 1,000 perfects out there. What I see up here, it’s great. It’s evolutionary. It keeps what’s so special about this place.”