At over eight hundred acres, El Dorado Park is one of the greatest municipal parks in Southern California. El Dorado and the adjacent Heartwell Park provide Eastside residents an incredible amount of recreational opportunities. Unfortunately, the rest of Long Beach is not as well served by such grand parks. As a built-out city we must be creative when looking for new open space on a scale of even Heartwell Park. To do so infrastructure will need to be realigned or covered, property consolidated and land acquired or created out of thin air.

The complete acquisition of the Los Cerritos Wetlands would create over three hundred acres of open space in the southeast corner of Long Beach. This would provide an opportunity to expose residents to nature through the restored marshlands spanning four miles into the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge. This new addition of open space could connect to El Dorado and Heartwell Park along the San Gabriel River creating a massive greenbelt along the city’s entire eastern border.

Over a year ago I wrote about developing a park by decking over the 405 Freeway as it travels below grade between Atlantic Avenue and Temple Avenue. This two city blocks wide and nearly mile and a half long park when combined with the Sports Park land would total over two hundred acres of new open space. Seattle and La Canada-Flintridge are among cities that have such freeway parks while other communities are studying the concept.

Central Long Beach’s Chittick Field is in the midst of being transformed into the super-size Kroc Center. Surrounding the site are depressed structures, vacant parcels and underused properties that when combined could create an urban oasis for residents of Long Beach and Signal Hill. This expanded park along the Pacific Electric right-of-way creates almost a hundred acres of open space anchored by a recreation center the size of a Walmart.

When reconfiguring the Long Beach breakwater, there is a question of what becomes of the thousands of cubic yards of rock removed to provide better tidal circulation. Expanding the port east a quarter mile to the edge of Carnival Cruises’ berth creates over a hundred acres of much needed open space for downtown residents. As a large recreational area with a rare east-facing shore this waterfront park could become a regional destination.

Being adjacent to the combined port complex, multiple freeways and dual container transfer railyards, the park-poor Westside bears the brunt of the nation’s goods movement. But an opportunity exists to create the second largest park in the city through the upgrade of the Intermodal Container Transfer Facility (ICTF). The modernization and realignment of this facility could make available over seventy acres of land that when combined with the Southern California Edison right-of-way would create over two-hundred acres of much needed open space on the Westside.

According to national standards these new parks would serve nearly a quarter of Long Beach’s population while also providing environmental benefit from the expansion wildlife habitat, reduction of the local heat island effect and creation of substantial carbon sinks. Every corner of Long Beach would have the advantage of a great urban park, each with the diversity of recreational amenities and trails available on the Eastside. For those wondering about North Long Beach, that will come later in the list of Ten Bold Ideas for the Future of Long Beach.

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