[The following final update was written by the organization and then sent to us for further sharing.]

Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative (LANI) has been honored to partner with LA2050 to increase the number of parks, green spaces, and tree canopies in high-need, park-poor neighborhoods. In communities with insufficient access to green space, residents suffer disproportionately from elevated physical and mental health risks including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and depression, among other serious ailments. The “Safe, Green, Walkable Neighborhoods For All” project has aimed to ultimately reduce current health disparities in the region by bringing green spaces where they are most needed in Los Angeles County.

Engaging in robust project pre-development is the first step to adding much-needed green open and recreational space. Identifying needs and opportunity sites, building relationships with relevant stakeholders, community leaders, and decision-makers, and researching possible project funding are all essential steps in successfully building parks and open spaces, but these important efforts are typically not funded by resources that are ultimately secured. Thanks to this LA2050 grant, LANI was able to dedicate additional time to the crucial pre-development work that will ultimately help bring green spaces and infrastructure to disadvantaged communities.

For the purposes of this project, LANI committed to identifying at least 3 new park or greening project opportunities, such as pocket parks, tot lots, or green open recreational spaces on city owned land or right of ways, green alleys, or school greening projects. We also committed to working with at least 6 new local leaders, community groups, nonprofit organizations, or individual community members to identify park needs and opportunities and strategize with them about how to make the opportunities into realities.

Over the course of the past year, we identified four new greening project opportunities, and we are highlighting three of them in this report. Especially exciting to us is that most of these projects are new project types in the LANI portfolio. We have been able to leverage our expertise in implementing community driven capital projects and expand into school greening and green alleys, which have a great deal of promise to deliver multi-benefits in underserved neighborhoods. Our success is a direct result of receiving the support of the LA2050 grant.

The first project is a school greening project at Baldwin Hills Elementary School (BHES). We utilized a list of priority schools for greening compiled by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to identify potential campuses that were in dire need of greening and de-paving but low enough on the district list to warrant outside assistance. We reached out to multiple schools and started querying our existing networks to unearth possible contacts. Ultimately, we found that not only was one of our Board members an alumni parent of BHES, but one of our program managers knew a current parent there who was also using the campus as a studio lab for a graduate-level landscape architecture course she was teaching at California State University, Pomona (Cal Poly). The grad students were already engaging students at BHES, doing preliminary site assessments, and creating design concepts for campus greening. The Cal Poly studio was happy to share their findings and designs, and the school administrators were eager to have assistance building on the momentum of greening the campus. As a result, we were able to submit a grant proposal for $1.4 million to the 2024 CAL FIRE Urban and Community Forestry Program Inflation Reduction Act Grant to green the BHES campus, and we were honored to be awarded. In addition, we submitted a grant to the Baldwin Hills & Urban Watersheds Conservancy for an additional $613,000 to complete the project; that grant is currently under consideration. The project will de-pave 29,131 sq ft of asphalt and plant 44 new trees and 28,278 sq ft of new shrubs and ground cover. It will also create four new play-and-learn forests that can be utilized both as outdoor classrooms and nature-based play spaces, as well as a native habitat learning garden and a private shaded sitting garden for faculty.

The second project we identified was a potential green alley network in South Los Angeles that would connect a park we are currently constructing on a large median at the intersection of Western and Gage Avenues with the Harvard Park Recreation Center about 1/3 of a mile away. While engaging community members during the design of the park, we learned that the alleys often flood and that they are used as pedestrian walkways by people in the neighborhood. We realized that there was an opportunity to improve the water infrastructure, such as bioswales, permeable paving, and/or underground water capture, and to provide some potential shade if trees could be planted and/or beautification if murals could be installed. We learned that the alleys were part of the Central Santa Monica Bay Watershed, and with the support of the Watershed Coordinators and new contacts at the City of Los Angeles Department of Sanitation (who are charged with maintaining alleys in the city’s right of way), we submitted a Technical Resources Program (TRP) application to the Safe Clean Water Program (SCWP). If approved, the TRP will fund a feasibility study that is required before any water capture or cleaning infrastructure can be proposed. The TRP does not provide funding to LANI per se but commits $400,000 so that County and City agencies can research the feasibility of greening the proposed alleys and make recommendations, which LANI would then use to design a fundable project. We submitted the TRP application in June 2024, and we have been invited to make a presentation on the project to the Central Santa Monica Bay Watershed Area Steering Committee in January 2025, which will decide if the feasibility study will move forward.

The third project we identified is another potential green alley project. Through a new contact, Alissa Walker, journalist and creator of the blog Torched that focuses on L.A. infrastructure, we learned about the Gabba Gallery Alley Project, a community-driven beautification project started in 2014 that created 110 murals by more than 85 local and international artists in the residential alleys of the Historic Filipinotown neighborhood (Alissa is a resident and has a mural on her garage door). The alley gallery is a significant source of local pride and attracts visitors from around the world. However, the asphalt in many of the alleys is uneven or entirely broken, weeds and litter abound, some of the murals have been graffitied, and like so many of our shared public spaces, the crisis of homelessness has also had an impact. In addition, the streets around the alleys flood, and there does not appear to be any water control or capture infrastructure that could alleviate the flooding, such as drains or other infiltration. We meet regularly with a group that includes community members who would like to revitalize the alleys, the gallery owner who led the mural project, and the local City Council Office (District 13), who has funding to help revive or replace some of the existing murals. All agree that the addition of water capture and cleaning infrastructure would be a strong benefit to the community, especially if the asphalt is going to ultimately be replaced anyway (much is beyond repair). LANI is currently pursuing a SCWP Community Engagement grant; our plan is to partner with local community groups to learn more about what local residents and businesses would like to see in the alleys, and to educate stakeholders about the multi-benefits of incorporating water capture and cleaning infrastructure – potentially including green bioswales and trees. In this way, we hope to lay the groundwork for future capital implementation funding that would make the alleys safe and dry for the many pedestrians and cyclists who use them to travel, especially families using them to go to and from school, which is a popular local usage according to anecdotal information. We plan to submit the community engagement grant in early 2025.

Finally, although the requested word count does not permit it, we are also involved in the early development stages of a traffic safety and park renovation project at Ted Watkins Park, an L.A. County Park located in Watts. Our partners in that project are the Southern California ACLU, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, Dignity and Power Now, and local residents.

We are proud that we have been able to leverage the LA2050 grant and move these multi-benefit green infrastructure projects forward, and we are deeply grateful to LA2050 for your support and endorsement.

Over the course of the grant period, LANI identified at least three new park or greening opportunities including: Baldwin Hills Elementary School Living Schoolyard, Western Gage Green Alleys Network, Hifi Green Alleys Network and Outdoor Art Gallery, and Ted Watkins Park-Design Justice in Watts.

It also worked with at least six new community members or local leaders:

Baldwin Hills Elementary School staff and stakeholders

• Angela Killen, School Principal
• Jacquelyn Walker, Community School Coordinator (staff)
• Meagan Yellott, BHES parent, licensed landscape architect, and Cal Poly Studio Instructor
• Melissa Guerrero, licensed landscape architect, and Cal Poly Studio Instructor

Western Gage Green Alleys Network stakeholders and supporters

• Max Bracey, Central Santa Monica Bay Watershed Coordinator
• Vanessa Boudreau, Central Santa Monica Bay Watershed Coordinator
• Susie Santilena, Acting Senior Environmental Engineer, LA Sanitation and Environment

Hifi Green Alleys Network and Outdoor Art Gallery

• Alissa Walker, Torched and Hifi resident
• Jason Ostro, Gabba Gallery Owner and Hifi stakeholder
• Emma Howard, Community Development and Planning Director, L.A. City Council District 13
• Rogelio Pardo, Transportation and Infrastructure Deputy, L.A. City Council District 13

Ted Watkins Park

• Helen Jones, local resident and Senior Campaign Lead, Dignity and Power Now 13. Asiyahola Sankara, Equal Justice Works Fellow, SoCal ACLU
• Sheila Bates, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles

On behalf of neighborhood stakeholders and all our project partners, LANI is deeply grateful for the generosity, encouragement, and flexibility of LA2050 throughout the funding period. This $50,000 grant was essential for bringing these impactful projects to life. We profoundly appreciate LA2050’s investment in our mission, and we are hopeful that we can continue to partner in the future on other projects that make underserved neighborhoods healthier, greener, and more beautiful places for the people who work, learn, and live there.