Children, families and Signal Hill city officials gathered Tuesday morning to celebrate the ribbon cutting of the newly renovated Hillbrook Park.
The previous small climbing structure and lone swingset have been replaced by a large playground with multiple slides, educational interactive displays, new floor padding, multiple benches, tables and plenty of shade. Following remarks from City Manager Carlo Tomaino and Mayor Keir Jones, dozens of children and their guardians scaled the new playground equipment and ran up and down the sloped surroundings.
“We had almost a year of neighborhood outreach to find out what the community wanted to use this park for … and we were able to take the original creek water feature out of the middle and create almost double the usable space in the park,” said Mayor Keir Jones. “So we’ve created a tremendous community asset here that can be used for recreation and relaxation for the neighborhood for years to come.”
Renovations for Hillbrook Park began nearly a year ago as part of the City’s Parks and Recreation Master Plan approved in 2021. Signal Hill City Council allocated $1.85 million to the planning, designing and implementation of the park renovations. The playground equipment was manufactured and installed by Green Giant Landscaping.
The park’s dry creek bed was removed and replaced with stormwater retention features, which made the project eligible for a $173,000 reimbursement from the Metropolitan Water District.
Residents were also able to give feedback on Signal Hill’s street tree planting plan, which is near completion. Attendees placed stickers on their favorite trees out of 36 options, signaling what kind of trees they want to see in the city. Landscape designers with SWA Group, which was chosen to implement the Street Tree Master Plan, were present to provide information.
The Signal Hill Sustainability Committee will review the feedback given at the ribbon cutting ceremony at its meeting Tuesday, Feb. 4 at 6 p.m. Signal Hill City Council will then review the committee’s recommendations and finalize the tree planting plan at its meeting on March 11 at 7 p.m.
The City recently received a $1 million grant from Green Latinos to plant 594 new trees “to combat urban heat caused by lack of tree coverage.”
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A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the city manager as Tom Modica, who is the city manager for Long Beach. Signal Hill’s city manager is Carlo Tomaino. The Signal Tribune regrets this error.
