At a regular city council meeting on Monday, November 15, 2021, West Hollywood council members requested a West Hollywood Park, particularly when the playground would open and if it was possible to open portions of the park while the new Aquatics and Recreation Center is still going through some finishing touches.
“We are not able to open at this time due to the fact that every playground undergoes a rigorous and thorough inspection and all the items that are associated with it,” said Recreation and Services director, Steve Campbell via the virtual council meeting.
“Unfortunately the playground hasn’t passed all of those tests,” he said. “We’re actively working with a contractor to resolve those issues. Hopefully we’ll get there soon and kind of consider that part of the phase to opening to the public and perhaps allow the public to use some of the park areas prior to the park actually opening the building.”
Photo by Mike Pingel for WEHO TIMESCampbell said the same goes for where the City of West Hollywood is at with the building itself. “I’m hopeful that we will be there before the end of the year, but this is a difficult process going through the commissioning and testing all of the systems in the building, making sure it is right before we accept it and actually move in.”
AIA Los Angeles is offered a chance to get a sneak peek of West Hollywood Park with a special tour of the Aquatic and Recreation Center this past Thursday. Roughly 25 people paid a few to some of the first to tour the entire park and learn about about the architecture.
As the project nears the completion of construction, this was an early preview of the Aquatic and Recreation Center given by the project designers. The discussion on the tour highlight how the community contributed to and drove the development of the project.
The assessment on the tour is that the park will not open until early 2022.
I liked it before, and we should have just restored the Ed Fickett masterplan and expanded the library. I hope they don’t shit up Plummer Park next.
Have you looked through the fence to the children’s playground area? There’s debris and litter thrown in the new plantings. It already looks like some of the plants are dying and not cared for very well. It would be nice if they put some more care into all these plantings that cost the taxpayers a lot of money. Where is the project manager? I hate to see the park rush to open before all the plantings take hold and have a chance to mature a little bit before people stomp through them.
West Hollywood Park should be prioritized to complete. 5 years, massive cost overruns, a bond measure equal to $290,000,000 to finance the overruns, the residents of West Hollywood are paying the highest sales tax in the country to pay for the bond measure and all we get is continued delays and pathetic excuses. There has been zero accountability on this project. The city is being milked dry and no one is asking questions. The council needs the get the damn park completed.
There needs to be an independent investigation and audit into the entire West Hollywood Park process and finances.
Early 2022. FIVE years to build a park.
Over budget, over schedule, no accountability on a $200M project.
Unacceptable.
Completely unacceptable.
It is common knowledge amongst contractors that governments are deep pockets and so propose at a certain price, get into the middle of it and hike the price with various technical reasonings knowing that government folks won’t know much, won’t want to be embarrassed, won’t want to put a spotlight on their doings investigating or delaying completion. They want that ribbon cutting photo. And, what the hey: They are spending other people’s money.