Children Lose in Park Feuds

Everyone cheered last year when state officials offered to buy two large but ratty tracts of land downtown and make them parks. In a city with far too little green space, especially in its urban core, the 32-acre Cornfield next to Chinatown and the 30-acre Taylor Yard in Cypress Park will make a big difference.

Community leaders and environmental activists had pried these properties away from commercial developers in a David-and-Goliath struggle and then leaned on Gov. Gray Davis to buy them. But once the state took title, the squabbling began over how to use these old rail yards.

Many local residents and youth advocates insist that more athletic fields and sports leagues are the first priority -- and that they were an implicit part of the deal for these parks. State officials insist that they made no promises and argue that neighbors also want space for a quiet stroll through meadows and trees. Moreover, these officials contend, the mission of the state park service is to protect natural resources and historic sites, not to operate ball fields.

Already, the hue and cry from the hundreds of local parents who have had to schlep their soccer-playing kids to fields across town has the state entertaining a land swap that would let the city run sports programs on part of Taylor Yard.

The Cornfield, environmental groups argue, should remain as open space in part because remnants of the city’s original water canal are buried beneath it. But Chinatown parents desperately want a middle school on at least part of that site so their children won’t have to ride the bus anymore. Others want space for a cultural museum and a community center.

State park officials who felt like heroes last year when they wrote the checks for these garbage-choked lots must feel that no good deed goes unpunished. This wrestling match will end only when all parties recognize that no matter how they are developed, these two properties alone won’t fill every community need.

An advisory group representing the neighborhood, the state and others with an interest will in February make public its recommendations for the Cornfield and Taylor Yard. State officials, meanwhile, should take into account the significant open space nearby in the city’s 200-acre Ernest Debs Regional Park and Griffith Park. Mayor James K. Hahn and other city officials should accelerate their own plans to add new parks and recreational space.

Until all of that happens, grown-ups will stay locked in a tug of war over two parks-to-be, with local kids the big losers.