Because of the circulation of the BA.2 subvariant, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health recommends that the most vulnerable people take precautions against catching the variant. This includes people who are not vaccinated, are immunocompromised, have underlying health conditions or are exposed to a lot of people. The recommended precautions include getting vaccinated or boosted, wearing a mask or ventilator like N95 or KN95 while in indoor public settings, and getting tested before and after gatherings. The department recommended that people who are traveling for spring break or religious holidays follow these precautions as well.
The department said there are about 2.6 million residents in the county who are eligible for a booster shot, and 1.7 million who are unvaccinated.
The department also said that people who were vaccinated were less likely to become infected, and less likely to need hospitalization if they are infected. It said that people who were not vaccinated were two times more likely to be infected, and that unvaccinated people were six times more likely to be hospitalized than vaccinated and boosted people.
The Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach April 1, debuted a new Clean Truck Fund, a major initiative designed to help incentivize the development and deployment of zero-emission (ZE) trucks and infrastructure at the ports. Approximately $90 million is expected to be collected the first year, moving the San Pedro Bay port complex toward a goal of being serviced by a 100% zero-emission drayage truck fleet by 2035.
Phasing out older, more polluting trucks has been key to clean air gains the San Pedro Bay ports have made since the original Clean Truck programs were launched in 2008 as part of the Clean Air Action Plan. Under the Clean Truck Fund (CTF) program, the two ports April 1, began collecting a rate of $10 per loaded twenty-foot-equivalent unit on drayage trucks entering or leaving container terminals. Exemptions to the CTF rate will be provided for containers hauled by zero-emission trucks; containers hauled by low-nitrogen oxide-emitting (low-NOx) trucks will receive limited-time exemptions from the CTF rate.
The Los Angeles Harbor Commission last week approved priority targets and pathways that will be used to disseminate the newly collected funds, including:
Truck Voucher Incentive Program: To incentivize the purchase of ZE trucks that service the San Pedro Bay port complex, the Port of Los Angeles will provide first-come, first-served, point-of-sale ZE truck purchase vouchers for at least $150,000 to licensed motor carriers in the Port Drayage Truck Registry. Each truck funded will be obligated to provide drayage service to the San Pedro Bay Port complex for a period of three years.
Infrastructure Funding Program: Modeled after existing federal, state and local grant programs and to be managed by a third-party administrator, this program provides funds to help drayage licensed motor carriers to install or obtain ZE charging and/or fueling infrastructure. Funding could also be used to support public charging and fueling infrastructure for zero emission drayage trucks.
More information about the Clean Truck Fund rate, including a fact sheet and frequently asked questions,may be found here.
At 92, the iconic labor activist continues to fight for workers’ rights.
Dolores Huerta marched with family members of Larry Itliong, revered Filipino labor organizer and UFW co-founder, and Mari Perez, co-director of the Larry Itliong Resource Center, in celebration of the declaration of Larry Itliong Day by the State of California.
Maria Elena Durazo, California State senator:
“When I became the first woman of color to lead the Hotel Workers Local 11 of Los Angeles, Dolores Huerta was there to support me. When I became the first woman of color to lead the 800,000 workers of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, Dolores was there to encourage me. And when I became a California State senator, Dolores was there to inspire me.
Dolores knew who I was because she knew the world I come from. I grew up in a family of farmworkers. All of us worked in the fields, picking peaches and grapes and cotton, from the time I could walk. I never understood how it could be that our family all worked so hard, and yet never emerged from poverty. In that world of rural California, it was the grape strike and the boycotts that taught us that the only way to end that poverty and stop injustice was to organize together to change it. It was the United Farm Workers who taught us that. For me, Dolores was the best teacher among many good ones, teaching me the power of the union and nonviolent action.
Over the years, Dolores became my friend and mentor. In her I could see a woman of color who became a union leader-a leader of our movement for social justice. She never backed down or wavered. If she could do it, so could I.
Dolores Huerta turns 92 on April 10. Amazingly (or maybe not), she is still organizing, still fighting, still challenging us all to stand up, organize and make this world a better place. The best way we can celebrate this extraordinary woman is to join her. Every speech I’ve ever heard her give ends with her getting us all to shout out, “Si, se puede!” So let’s shout it out with her now-Si, se puede! “
Dolores Huerta and other farmworkers who marched for 20 days to Sacramento wore wooden crosses to show their status as peregrinos.
Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, Chicano & labor studies professor, UCLA:
“Long before the Delano Grape Strike began in 1965, Dolores Huerta earned her stripes as an organizer working with the radical Filipinos of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in her native Stockton, even recruiting Larry Itliong, the veteran Filipino organizer of the canneries and fields of the Pacific Northwest. The migration of the indigenous people of Oaxaca, which brought myself, Rufino Dominguez, and other radicals into the California fields, came in the 1980s. By then Dolores was a legend, but to us someone who shared our ideas about organizing and radical social change.
Dolores Huerta’s life is part of our collective history of resistance. She is a living link between radical ideas for social change that have defined today’s movements for racial justice, worker rights and feminist thought.
We even owe her the chant that all of us know and use almost daily, regardless of what part of the movement we come from. In May 1972, the Arizona legislature passed a growers’ bill denying farm workers the right to strike and boycott. When Cesar Chavez started a fast to protest, it fell to Dolores to build people’s resistance in the streets. Everyone told her resistance was futile. In a moment of inspiration Dolores responded, ¡Si, se puede! (Yes, it’s possible!). Ever since, when we need to show our strength and knowledge that we’ll eventually win, we all shout out, ¡Si, se puede!
¡Que viva Dolores Huerta! “
A march and rally to organize strawberry workers in Watsonville begins with Huerta denouncing company terror tactics to the media.
David Bacon, writer and photographer:
“Last fall I walked from Poplar to Delano, Calif., in honor of Larry Itliong, who started the 1965 grape strike and boycott there, with Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm Workers (UFW). She was 91 then, and I had a hard time keeping up. She sent me a note afterward that ended, “Sí Se Puede con El Rojo Tocino.” It was a beautiful joke.
“Sí Se Puede” are three words we all use now, but she invented this confident way of saying “Yes We Can!” “Tocino” was the nickname the union gave me in the years I worked as an organizer-it means “bacon,” my last name. And calling me “El Rojo,” or “The Red,” in this way honored my politics.
When I came back from a solidarity work brigade in Cuba in the 1970s, I landed in New York City with no place to sleep. I called Dolores’s daughter, Lori, a friend from California. Not only did I get space on the floor of the NYC boycott’s headquarters, but Dolores and her partner, Richard, César Chávez’s brother, took us out to eat. Over pizza I enthused about the island. I had stars in my eyes, for both Cuba and Dolores, and still do. I went to work for the UFW as an organizer a few months later.
There was often tension in the union about radical politics, and being called a red was sometimes the route out the door. But for Dolores and Eliseo Medina, being a good organizer was the bottom line-doing what the workers needed.
Over the years, long after I had left the UFW and worked for other unions and then as a photojournalist, I would see Dolores again and again. Going to Watsonville to cover the organizing drives of strawberry workers or to Salinas for the strikes in the vegetable fields, I knew she’d be there. It was a profound experience to watch her in union contract negotiations-this diminutive woman facing off against the beefy growers across the table-and see the sense of power it gave workers.
Returning from Iraq, where I photographed workers after the 2003 US invasion, I took her picture in the front line of marchers against the war. When we were in Sacramento trying to stop the anti-immigrant, anti-affirmative-action, anti-bilingual initiatives, she was the first to speak out.
So when she called me El Rojo Tocino, I thought, “What a compliment!” I hope I live up to it. “
At the beginning of the Iraq War, Huerta marches with actor Danny Glover and an enormous crowd demanding that the troops be brought home.Dolores Huerta at a march calling for making Cesar Chavez’ birthday a holiday in California.Huerta explains to a meeting of rose workers the progress of negotiations of their union contract, at the UFW’s historic Forty Acres headquarters.Huerta and rose workers talk about the harassment of workers and women in the fields.Huerta presents the union’s proposals for a fair contract to the managers of the Bear Mountain Rose Nursery in the San Joaquin Valley.At a Watsonville rally UFW president-emeritus Arturo Rodriguez, Huerta and former organizing director Efren Barajas sing with the daughter of strawberry workers.The year after the death of Cesar Chavez Huerta and UFW leaders begin a march to Sacramento by ritually washing the feet of the workers who founded the union in the 1965 grape strike.At the Sacramento rally on the state capitol steps at the end of the march.Huerta marches with farmworkers in Salinas who’ve gone on strike against D’Arrigo Brothers Produce.Huerta and Rodriguez organized a march and rally in Salinas to support the campaign by John Sweeney to become president of the AFL-CIO.At the start of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in San Francisco, Huerta and hotel workers marched to demand immigrant reform.Huerta, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and the head of the National Organization of Women lead the March Against the Right in San Francisco.Huerta, a former school teacher, talks with children at Jefferson Elementary School in Oakland.Huerta speaks at a rally of longshoremen in San Francisco who have refused to unload coffee from El Salvador during the Central American civil wars.Huerta speaks at a Sacramento rally supporting affirmative action, and opposing what would eventually become Proposition 209.
David Bacon is author of Illegal People-How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (2008), and The Right to Stay Home (2013), both from Beacon Press. His latest book, More Than a Wall/Mas que un muro, will be published next month by the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. For more information about it, write to dbacon@igc.org
California Updated Climate Adaptation Strategy to Protect Communities from Accelerating Impacts
SACRAMENTO — Following the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s release of its latest report on efforts to combat the climate crisis, the Newsom Administration April 4, launched the state’s Climate Adaptation Strategy outlining the all-hands-on-deck approach to building climate resilience across California. The announcement comes on the heels of the latest snow survey conducted on April 1, which found that the statewide snowpack has dropped to 38 percent following three straight months of record dry conditions.
The Climate Adaptation Strategy elevates six key priorities that must drive all resilience actions in California:
Strengthen protections for climate-vulnerable communities
Bolster public health and safety efforts to protect against increasing climate risks
Build a climate-resilient economy
Accelerate nature-based climate solutions and strengthen climate resilience of natural systems
Make decisions based on the best available climate science
Partner and collaborate to leverage resources
It also brings together in one place nearly 150 climate adaptation actions from existing state plans and strategies, and for the first time, introduces success metrics and timeframes for each action.
This strategy has also been developed to guide and link several sector-based efforts already underway to address climate-driven threats, such as the state’s Water Resilience Portfolio and Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan. It also connects region-based efforts in progress across the state.
California’s Climate Adaptation Strategy is being made available in an interactive website rather than a traditional hard copy report. This website will provide an ongoing hub for information on climate resilience and will make it easier for Californians to understand and shape climate action. The website will be updated to track progress and adjustments, and integrate emerging, best-available science.
California Launches Strategic Plan to Increase Wildfire Mitigation with Prescribed Fire Efforts
SACRAMENTO – The Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force March 30, issued a strategic plan for expanding the use of beneficial fire to expand the use of prescribed fire and cultural burning to build forest and community resilience statewide – efforts critical to forest management and wildfire mitigation. By expanding the use of beneficial fire, the state can utilize smart burning tactics on brush and other fuels to help both prevent the start of fires and mitigate the spread of wildfires.
Based on a collaborative effort of the state’s leading fire experts and managers, the Strategic Plan sets a target of expanding beneficial fire to 400,000 acres annually by 2025, a shared goal between state, federal, tribal and local entities – part of an overall goal to treat 1 million acres annually in California by 2025. The state invested $1.5 billion in wildfire resilience in 2021, including significant support for prescribed fire and cultural burning.
The key elements include:
Launching an online prescribed fire permitting system to streamline the review and approval of prescribed fire projects; Establishing the state’s new Prescribed Fire Claims Fund to reduce liability for private burners; Beginning a statewide program to enable tribes and cultural fire practitioners to revitalize cultural burning practices; A prescribed fire training center to grow, train and diversify the state’s prescribed fire workforce; An interagency beneficial fire tracking system; Pilot projects to undertake larger landscape-scale burns; and A comprehensive review of the state’s smoke management programs to facilitate prescribed fire while protecting public health.
The announcement delivers on several of the key commitments made in the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan issued in January 2021. The Action Plan is also backed by the Governor’s $1.5 billion investment in forest health and wildfire resilience, and a proposed $1.2 billion additional investment for fiscal years 2022-23 and 2023-24.
St. Mary Medical Center March 31, was recognized as an LGBTQ+ Healthcare Equality Top Performer by the Human Rights Campaign which is the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ organization.
The HEI is the nation’s foremost benchmarking survey of healthcare facilities on policies and practices dedicated to the equitable treatment and inclusion of their LGBTQ+ patients, visitors and employees.
The HEI evaluates and scores healthcare facilities on detailed criteria falling under four central pillars:
Foundational Policies and Training in LGBTQ+ Patient-Centered Care; LGBTQ+ Patient Services and Support; Employee Benefits and Policies; and Patient and Community Engagement.
LGBTQ+ patients have historically faced significant and long standing challenges to accessing the care they need. The CARE Center at St. Mary was founded at the start of the AIDS crisis in 1986 to support people living with HIV and others directly impacted by the virus.
St. Mary Medical Center is one of dozens of Dignity Health care sites recognized in the 2022 HEI. As part of the HEI survey process, St. Mary worked with a nationally recognized LGBTQ+ health expert to undertake a comprehensive review of LGBTQ+ care policies and practices within the organization. St. Mary updated dozens of policies to support LGBTQ+ health care outcomes, expanded training for staff and clinicians, updated patient forms and IT processes to better capture preferred pronouns and solicit feedback from LGBTQ+ patients, created the role of an LGBTQ+ patient advocate, and clarified wording in employee benefits to be explicitly inclusive of LGBTQ+ employees – to name just a few examples.
Congressman Alan Lowenthal announced March 26, the California Air Resources Board released a newly-passed commercial harbor craft regulation that includes the nation’s first zero-emission marine standard.
Harbor craft, which include fishing vessels, ferries, excursion vessels, tugboats, tow boats, crew and supply boats, barges, and dredges, are in the top three emission emitting categories at seaports, contributing more diesel particulate matter emissions than diesel trucks in 2023 at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
This new regulation is the nation’s strongest commercial harbor craft public health regulation and includes the nation’s first zero-emissions mandate for ferries. The regulation is projected to save more than 500 lives a year and protect another 9.7 million Californians from elevated levels of air pollution.
U.S. EPA penalizes So Cal refinery For Violating Oil Spill Prevention Requirements, Endangering LA Waterways
LOS ANGELES — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) March 30,announced a settlement with Lunday-Thagard Company dba World Oil Refining (World Oil) for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act and its implementing regulations related to oil pollution prevention at the company’s South Gate, Calif. refinery and storage facility. Under the settlement, World Oil will pay a $112,673 penalty.
The facility is located near the Rio Hondo Channel and the Los Angeles River. Each of the waterways flow to the Long Beach Harbor and the Pacific Ocean, as well as the Golden Shore Marine Reserve, an environmentally sensitive site that is of the “highest concern for protection” according to the Los Angeles/Long Beach Area Contingency Plan developed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife as a way to prepare for major oil spills. EPA alleges that the company violated the Clean Water Act’s Oil Pollution Prevention Regulations after EPA inspections at the facility on March 31 and April 16, 2021 found that World Oil failed to:
Implement tank and facility inspections according to the written procedures in the Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure Plan;
Inspect and conduct integrity tests on tanks in accordance with industry standards;
Promptly correct visible discharges which result in a loss of oil from containers; and
Develop an adequate Facility Response Plan (FRP) to respond to oil spills.
World Oil took the following steps to come into compliance:
developed and began implementation of an updated tank testing and inspection schedule;
implemented a revised oil spill prevention training program; and
The music world and Los Angeles have lost the legendary jazz and blues singer and force of nature, Barbara Morrison on March 16.
The three-time Grammy-nominated performer and record producerwas also an ethnomusicologist — someone who examines music as a social process in order to understand not only what music is but what it means to its practitioners and audiences.
Morrison was committed to fortifying the LA music community and nurturing new talent. Her dedication was given life in the form of the Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center, which she opened in 2009 in Leimert Park. This was followed in 2010 by her founding of the California Jazz and Blues Museum, also located in Leimert Park cultural hub. Morrison was also an associate professor of jazz studies at UCLA, where she taught as an ethnomusicologist. Recently, the university launched the Barbara Morrison Scholarship for Jazz.
Born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and raised in Romulus, Michigan, Morrison recorded her first appearance for radio in Detroit at the age of 10. In the early 1970s, at 23-years-old, she moved to Los Angeles and sang with Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson’s band.
Between the mid-1970s and early 1990s, she recorded several albums with Johnny Otis, and from the 1980s to 2021, Morrison recorded 22 albums. In her more than 60 year career, Morrison has appeared with musicians of local and international renown, including Tony Bennett, Nancy Wilson, Ray Charles, Etta James, Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Terence Blanchard, Nancy Wilson, Mel Tormé and Keb’ Mo. She has performed at the Sea Jazz Festival, the Bern Jazz Festival and the Playboy Jazz Festival. Morrison also toured Europe with Ray Charles.
On the local front, Barbara Morrison was a regular draw at music festivals throughout the region, such as the Long Beach Jazz Festival where she appeared regularly with Al Williams Jazz Society, the Long Beach Blues Festival, The New Blues Festival, the Bayou Festival and Leimert Park Jazz Festival. The icon graced many jazz venues throughout Southern California like The Catalina Jazz Club, Millennium Biltmore Hotel Gallery Bar and Pips on La Brea, where Morrison regularly hosted Tuesdays with Barbara and Friends.
In her career, Morrison has been the recipient of awards including the Living Legend Award from the Living Legend Foundation, Los Angeles County Museum of Art/LA Jazz Society’s LA Treasures Award and Motown’s Hal Award.
On March 26, Morrison’s fans and music community attended a public viewing service at theCongregational Church of Christian Fellowship in LA. Afterward, a celebration of the icon’s life was held at the Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center.
Barbara Morrison is survived by her brother, Richard Morrison; two sisters, Pamela Morrison-Kersey and Armetta Morrison; and 10 nieces and nephews. She was 71-years-old when she died.
Details: A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to cover Barbara’s funeral and estate expenses, which you can find here,
You might have heard of the famous Long Beach SoCal wings. It’s a good thing Carson residents no longer have to worry about a long drive. Located in the center of Carson, right down Avalon, these Asian inspired wings are sure to bring comfort.
An Asian fusion restaurant, owners Leang Lee and Linda Arn are ready to expand their business. The menu has cheesy potato bowls, along with rice bowls, shrimp and mozzarella egg rolls. Along with the diversity of food, the menu contains classic buffalo and spicy lemon pepper wings. Don’t forget the boba tea drinks with some popcorn chicken! Oh, and there’s pasta.
This donut shop comes with a creative delight. On the menu are donuts stuffed with matcha, mango, taro and Thai tea, while the exteriors are glazed in cereal, chocolate and cookies and cream. If you are interested in drinks, there is a variety of boba milk teas.
Dot & Dough opened its first location in 2019 and is already on the verge of opening five new establishments along the California coast. With 20k Instagram followers, it is sure to get more traction from sweet goers.
The establishment is now open to the public. The shop just hosted its grand opening on March 26.
There is a new pizzeria in Carson that is sure to bring in a lot of new customers. Its 337k followers on Instagram think so. While it is not yet open, it is aiming for April 1 as its opening date.
With a variation of culinary gourmet meats, stretchy cheese, and black garlic-infused marinara, owner Lee Kim makes it clear that this is not a fancy establishment but a neighborhood joint with a gourmet twist. This Korean-owned restaurant is ready to welcome its Carson residents to a new pizzeria experience ready for every season. But if you’re not craving pizza, that’s okay, because Burattino’s signature calzone and hot wings are available to eat. While you wait for its grand opening in April, you can stop by its San Pedro location.
Near the corner of the Pacific Coast Highway and Walnut Street in Lomita, stands one of the great Caribbean food joints in the South Bay. The Good Life Cafe stands at 1841 PCH but holds somewhat odd hours for a normal cafe, only open from 5 to 11 p.m. with the exception of Sundays where it’s open from 12 to 5 p.m. according to its website.
I arrived on a Friday at 6:45 p.m. and although the restaurant is large on the outside and considering the time and day, I assumed the place would be bustling with life. Entering the cafe proved a different scene. A large empty space to the right as you enter, and a normal but also empty traditional eating area with tables and a bar to the left are the two main areas of The Good Life Cafe. Three tables were filled on the left side with people waiting for orders and watching March Madness Basketball on three TV monitors perched nearby. Large and various Caribbean flags were draped along the walls of the restaurant, as well as posters of athletes like Manny Pacquiao, LeBron James, Lionel Messi, and Cristiano Ronaldo. With no host or waiter in sight, I sat myself at one of the tables.
After ten minutes, a waiter emerged from the kitchen and took my order. The strange and odd feeling I felt as I waited for my food was finally realized as I noticed that the only sound in the cafe was of the basketball game being played on the TV.
After about 40 minutes of waiting, the food arrived, and with the current vibrations of the room, I was skeptical of the food that was now coming, but to my surprise, the food was worth the rest. For $12, the well-cooked pineapple jerk shrimp was sweet and juicy with jerk sauce on top making the plate worthy of ordering. The pineapple, vegetables, and rice and beans were nothing to really remember. These items were not bad by any means and I did certainly eat all of it, but it did lack any real taste that would be worth remembering.
The jerk chicken main course for $16 was similar in that the chicken was extremely well cooked and had the same sweet sauce spread on top of it that I’m still fantasizing about today. It also came with the same vegetables and rice and beans that needed more salt or something else to make it stand on par with the meat.
Two jerk chicken tacos cost $5 total, and again had delicious meat, exquisite jerk sauce but somewhat forgettable vegetable toppings. The welcomed addition of some chopped-up mangos made the tacos even sweeter but not over the top. The shell was fresh but could have been crispier to accentuate the juiciness of the mango. For the price, the tacos are probably the best food option considering what you get.
I was in the mood for comfort food, so I also ordered the seafood mac ‘n’ cheese that came with lobster, crab, shrimp and clams in it for $20. Although I had a hard time distinguishing the tastes between the various sea dwellers, the overall taste was fantastic and decidedly comforting.
Along with all of that, I had ordered the sorrel and the sea moss smoothie, but realized it had never come. I got the attention of the waiter and asked about it, but he said that he probably didn’t have it anymore. After a check in the kitchen, he confirmed this, explaining that he didn’t have the recipe for these drinks since the old chef left. The old chef being Chef Bernard James, who was still on the front cover of the menus. We reached out to the chef but have received no response at the time. This lone waiter then went on to explain that he was the operator, cook and waiter of the establishment for the time being, which of course explained the emptiness or just clear lack of employees in the café. Modern reggae tunes soon filled the air, filling the strange void of silent customers and college basketball being heard from the TV set.
The Good Life Cafe has great food. There is no denying that. And if you are not in a rush, it’s a great place to have food, but even with these setbacks, the cafe manages to maintain excellent and by all accounts authentic Caribbean cuisine.
RANCHO PALOS VERDES — After nearly a decade of planning and community engagement, the City of Rancho Palos Verdes broke ground on an $18.7 million makeover of Ladera Linda Community Park, one of the most significant recreation projects in the city’s history.
City officials and community leaders gathered March 25 at the 11-acre site overlooking the ocean at 32201 Forrestal Drive to celebrate the start of construction on a revitalized community center and park.
Originally home to an elementary school that opened in 1967, following a decline in student enrollment, the site was repurposed as a park and community center in 1982. Ladera Linda Community Park is located next to the Forrestal Reserve, which is part of the Palos Verdes Nature Preserve, and features a variety of recreational facilities. With the park’s five aging buildings in serious disrepair, the city began a planning process in 2014 to revitalize the park and community center, involving input from a variety of stakeholders.
A master plan for the park was approved by the city council in 2019 and the project was granted entitlements in 2021. Financing and construction agreements were approved in March 2022. The existing nearly 19,000 square feet of buildings will be demolished to make way for a contemporary community center designed by Culver City-based architecture firm Johnson Favaro. The community center will include a dividable multi-purpose room, classrooms, a staff office, a warming kitchen, and a meeting room that will also serve as a “discovery room” displaying exhibits of local native plants and history. The site will also include patio areas, basketball courts, paddle tennis courts, a children’s playground, tiered outdoor seating, a lawn area, walking paths and 54 parking spaces.
The city is paying for the project through a combination of American Rescue Plan Act funds, Quimby funds, loan financing, and capital infrastructure project reserve funds, with a framework established to replenish the reserves.
Ladera Linda Community Park was closed for construction March 28. The project is expected to be completed in about 15 months.
