Tables and seating with umbrellas could soon be near the playground.
The nearly 30-year-old Palisades Playground, which is ADA inaccessible, might receive shade thanks to long-time resident Cindy Simon.
The Palisades Playground, built in 1986, has sand, and the lone tree that provided shade blew over late last year.
Restrooms, the parking lot and the playground were all topics covered at the quarterly Park Advisory Board (PAB) meeting held on October 10 at the small gym at the Palisades Rec Center.
“The bathrooms and playground here are a glaring liability for the City,” one Pacific Palisades board member had remarked at a prior PAB meeting.
The Pacific Palisades PAB voted to send a letter to the city asking for those items to be replaced.
In response, the Recreation and Parks Board of Commissioners has voted to replace the bathrooms, but the playground will not be part of the project.
Simon, who has volunteered by weeding at the Center and at George Wolfberg Park, noticed that the nannies bring children to the playground, but there is no shade. Often the nannies take children to the picnic tables by the bocce court, so that their young charges aren’t in the sun.
“It’s a serious health risk,” Simon said. “There should be tables and places to sit and eat by the playground.”
She contacted a City park vendor and found out that three ADA-accessible tables with attached chairs and 9-ft. umbrellas would cost $10,400.
Simon felt the money could be easily raised for the project and told the PAB that once the tables were paid for, they could be installed within 8-10 weeks. The PAB voted for the project to go forward.
PAB had learned that to have the Palisades Rec Center parking lot resurfaced might cost more than $100,000. The group will follow up because a portion of the lot is in bad condition with cracking and the pavement coming up.
On October 3, the Recreation and Parks Board of Commissioners approved the replacement of bathrooms at the Palisades Recreation Center at an estimated cost of $833,187.23.
The project scope for the Palisades Rec Center includes:
• Demolish the existing restrooms.
• Reconfigure the interior spaces to accommodate new stalls and all gender accessible restrooms.
• Install new plumbing chase, all new plumbing fixtures and lines along with new sewer piping.
• Install new tile and paint throughout.
• Install new restroom accessories.
• Install new electrical and lighting.
• Perform accessible parking improvements
The predesign phase will be October and November 2025. The design phase is projected for December 2025 to February 2026. The bid/award period is March 2026 to August 2026. Construction is supposed to start August 2026 and last through March 2027.
PAB members were appalled to learn that to replace two existing bathrooms would cost more than $800,000. One member of the board had just received a quote for his business to build two completely new bathrooms, including the trenching and the sewers and the amount he was quoted was $219,717.
He pointed out that the park bathrooms are existing, with the sewer trenching already in place, and that this estimate seemed high, by about a half a million dollars
“This should be brought to Traci’s [Councilmember Park] attention,” he said, “because this is just governmental waste.”
Another PAB member wondered about the playground. Initially they were told that both the playground and bathrooms could be replaced, “does the money for the restrooms take away from the playground?” he wondered.
The bathrooms at the old gym and adjacent to the playground are not handicapped accessible.
Wow, parents asked for shade, a tarp, a decent-sized tree, anything, for YEARS for the decrepit playground, and the administrative obstacles presented by PAB and RAP were always a mile high. Interesting that it takes the bocce constituency being annoyed by shrieking children playing near “their” courts to fast track approval of shade structures…who knew? Can the powerful bocce lobby also manifest the installation of gates at the park, so the derelict teen behavior on weekends (including drag racing) can finally be addressed? Is the fact these kids party on the wide open courts enough incentive?