This area along Pacific Coast Highway needs to be beautified.
At the beginning of January, Circling the News asked readers if they had any resolutions or local actions, they’d like to see taken in 2023.
One wrote: “Make the owners of the property on PCH between Potrero Canyon and Temescal stop treating it like a dump and beautify it.
“It seems like after the oil drilling was stopped there many years ago, the owners have gone out of their way to deliberately make it look terrible as a punishment for not getting what they wanted. It is such a signature piece of property on the coast, it is a shame to have it look so decrepit.
“Why do they get to store junk there, keep broken down K-rail, etc. It’s really an embarrassment.”
The area along Pacific Coast Highway between Potrero and Temescal is a Caltrans easement, and the K-rail and pipes belong to Caltrans.
Additionally, L.A. County Public Works installed a new water line along the highway, which was completed in August, and those construction materials were located along PCH.
George Wolfberg Park at Potrero Canyon was opened in December and the building at the base of the canyon belongs to Ford E.C. Inc., the Landscaping Company, which planted the 46-acre park.
Most recently, during the rains, two lanes of Pacific Coast Highway have been flooded. CTN contacted Caltrans and L.A. County Public Works on January 2 “In the decades I’ve lived in Pacific Palisades, there was never an issue of water pooling at that location until . . . the LA County Waterworks project was completed this past August.
“It appears that one of the large drains that goes under PCH is blocked. Is there a way to determine if this is the cause of the water pooling? It would be important to figure out before the next rains arrive at the beginning of next week.
This drain that runs between the land below Via de las Olas and the ocean appears to be blocked.
Lou Kamer, who is the Pacific Palisades Community Council transportation chair, wrote to PPCC in a January 5 email: “I met with the Caltrans maintenance team and County Contractors this morning.
“They dug large holes to drain the water off PCH and then moved it into one of their nearby pits. The road is now clear, and the immediate safety issue resolved.
I will continue to monitor the roadway, alert CHP and Caltrans of dangers, and report on any new developments or conversations.”
As to the future of the strip along PCH, it has been proposed that it be turned into a trail, so that people can walk from Wolfberg Park, along PCH, and then return to Pacific Palisades along Temescal Canyon Road.
U.S. House of Representative Ted Lieu announced last July that a community grant of $1.15 million had been approved to pay for the construction of a trail that will connect the George Wolfberg Park at Potrero Canyon Park with Temescal Canyon Road.
Funds will allow for the grading and installation of a half-mile long, 12-foot-wide decomposed granite trail and protective fence that will meander over the naturally hilly terrain along Pacific Coast Highway to Temescal.
Before Councilman Mike Bonin left his CD 11 office, his District Director Noah Fleishman said that the Bureau of Engineering had announced that the trail will most likely cost about $3 million. CD 11now have to lobby the City for more money to complete the trail.
A pedestrian bridge is needed on PCH by Potrero Canyon, to prevent people from crossing six lanes of traffic on the busy highway to reach the beach.
Photo: George Wolfberg
Residents have long argued that the trail is needed to prevent people from darting across PCH to access Will Rogers State Beach. The trail will take walkers to a light at Temescal that will allow them to cross to the beach.
Unfortunately, an agreement between the City and Caltrans to allow a path to be constructed has stalled.
A pedestrian bridge, at the base of Potrero that would connect the Wolfberg Park to Will Rogers State Beach, has been funded by the state for $11 million. The City Bureau of Engineering was supposed to design it.
There is no word from the City BOE if they have actually started working on a design. The money from the state came from Senator Ben Allen in July 2021.
I’m becoming thin-skinned. I was from birth in Rustic Canyon (still rustic) and took it for granted that PP – Revere through all the canyons to the Getty Villa and Pacific beaches – was a series of parks of all kinds, connecting across homes and grounds that were parks unto themselves. Our (12?) public and community parks are not “pocket parks”, they are huge. George Wolfberg was a worthy man; the tribes of Temescal Canyon were people of peace, and Will Rogers was…inestimable. I am ever more grateful, but no more “deserving” of this than I ever was – and certainly no more deserving than our crowded “working middle class”, far from an ocean view and generally without the leisure to know one. I read my beloved CTN and see $3 million here, $11 million there (and all SO slow in coming) to connect our newest huge park to another huge park over the oldest park of all (PCand its H). “(A) half mile long, twelve foot wide decomposed granite trail…that will meander over the naturally hilly terrain on Pacific Coast Highway to Temescal.” GULP.
The mouth of Potrero should remain fenced until the bridge is built. The pic of the jaywalkers is a ploy used by certain parties to ram a trail through the last untouched part of the Palisades where a dog park will most certainly evolve. Speaking of dog park, what is the status of all the sites in Temescal, both lower and upper, that have been “stalled” for the last 5 years? The canyon is already graffitti covered, the view from the beach and atop the bluff is disgusting, and now an inept contractor wants to spend another 5 years moving dirt around to pave under more deer, coyote, rabbit, coon, possum habitat? Yeah, I vote no.
Thank you for following up on my suggestion. It sounds like we are stuck in a bureaucratic mess.