This is a rendering of how the new playground might look.
YAY! A new playground is coming to the Palisades Recreation Center on Alma Real. That announcement was made at the Palisades Park Advisory Board Meeting, held via Zoom on March 18.
The playground at the Rec Center was nearly 40 years old. The sand was dirty, the material worn and the area was not ADA-accessible. The Park Advisory Board worked for years to find funding to replace it.
At one time there had been a shade tree for parents and kids to sit under, but the lone tree fell over during a rain storm a few years back, so there were no tables and no shade.
Over the past decade, at Park Advisory Board meetings a new playground was a topic, as were the ADA-accessible bathrooms.
It all changed last night thanks to a donation to the Los Angeles Parks Foundation, which received a monetary and in-kind contribution of $1,330,000. FireAid, made a million-dollar donation, GameTime (play and recreation equipment company) made an in-kind contribution of $300,000 and the Banc of California contributed $30,000.
FireAid funds came from various donors throughout the City of Los Angeles, the United States, and World, which were combined with ticket sales from the FireAid Benefit Concert held on January 30, 2025. The funds are being administered by the Annenberg Foundation, which has always supported parks, according to L.A. Parks Foundation Director Tony Budrovich.
This playground is a gigantic step up from the existing playground and will feature both a pre-school playground and a universally accessible playground installed adjacent to one another in the same area where the existing playground is located. The goal is for the playground to be completed by July 1, 2025, in anticipation of a Fourth of July opening.
Budrovich told the PAB Board that “We’re here to help. We will do our best to get this going.”
GameTime’s Nathan Younker showed different areas and the possible equipment and the selection was unbelievable. He said that there would be a lot of sensory panels, every slide has a transfer deck (for wheelchair bound), a roller slide (for children with cochlear implants) and spinning saucer rides. There were musical panels, stained glass, and structures that work on a child’s balance and climbing skills. There were spring toys and different kinds of swings.
Someone in the chat asked if the parents had weighed in on a playground. This editor has written about this playground so many times over the past decades that if parents have not weighed in before, to do so now would delay the project.
Steve Soboroff, who had built the last playground with raised private funds in 1986, said, “Careful of paralysis by analysis.”
It was agreed that not a lot of discussion was needed about the gift of a new playground. The board approved and lent support to Budrovich, who was getting final approval from Rec and Parks on Thursday.
Great news about the playground; it is unfortunate that the City does not see the need to provide any funding to the Palisades despite their negligent actions which created the destruction that private donors now must try and rebuild.
On the topic of rebuilding the park, let’s hope PAB is planning to rethink the safety aspects of this park. As we saw over the last 4-5 years, minors had taken over the park most weekend nights and were partying and setting explosives 2-3x a week. This cannot go on. It seems ludicrous that it is was allowed to go on for as long as it did, and the park committees must introduce measures to prevent the insanity that residents living near the park were forced to endure. GATE THE PARK.