Talent shows, free lunches, outdoor basketball courts, handball courts and tennis courts are just some of the things older residents used to enjoy at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in West Long Beach up until the late ‘90s.
Following decades of disinvestment, the Martin Luther King Jr. Park in East Long Beach is undergoing a visioning process to identify needs for funds, however, certain members of the community already feel as though they are being left out of the conversation.
Residents of the sixth district, including those who grew up at MLK Park and have since moved away, gathered in the park’s community center—which has not been renovated since its inception in 1970—on Sept. 25 for the visioning event to express their frustrations.
Long Beach’s Equity Officer, Alanah Grant was present to acknowledge resident’s “feelings of skepticism and mistrust with the government involvement.”
“It’s hard to hear, but we needed to hear it, it was a healthy conversation,” said Brian Ulaszewski, executive director principle for City Fabrik, a Long Beach-based nonprofit design studio that plans and implements development projects. “There’s been a lot of disinvestment in this community.”
City Fabrik was contacted by Councilwoman Suely Saro’s office, as the two worked together on the Cambodia Town Thrives Vision Plan. Saro’s office also collaborated with Love Beyond Limits, Black Resource Center, New Hope Academy for Change and the Long Beach Alliance for Food and Fitness.
According to Ulaszewski, Saro’s office began the planning process in April. Saro introduced an item to the City Council on April 5 to begin pre-planning for the MLK Park visioning process.
An aerial view of the green space that includes soccer and baseball fields at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Long Beach on Oct. 3, 2022. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune) 
A view of the playground equipment at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Long Beach on Oct. 3, 2022. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune) 
A statue of Martin Luther King Jr. is prominently displayed at the Long Beach park, bearing his name on Oct. 3, 2022. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune)
Ulaszewski said a total of $123,000 will go into the next year of planning for MLK Park.
“I’ll be honest with you, that’s not what usually goes into a planning process, but we’re going to make it work,” he told residents. “We want to attract the dollars and investment.”
Senay Kenfe, a member of one of the sixth district’s neighborhood associations, said that efforts to work with Saro’s office have been unsuccessful.
Kenfe said he contacted the City’s parks department on April 10 to address the needs at MLK Park and was told that Saro’s office would be undertaking efforts toward the visioning process. Since then, Kenfe and other neighborhood associations have been waiting for planning and visioning for the park to begin.
Residents questioned when Saro’s office began recruiting nonprofits and City groups for the kick-off event and asked who has been invited to the discussion so far.
“A lot of people in the community don’t feel heard, like they’re being ignored … I’m in the [biggest] neighborhood association, there’s a Latino neighborhood association and neither of us were included,” Kenfe said. “Needless to say we were invited by City Fabrik to be here, not the district.”
Councilwoman Saro was unable to attend the kick-off event due to illness, according to her staff.
Leonard Adams, a Long Beach resident and coordinator for Hoops After Dark, a basketball youth and leadership program, asked the City to bring a familiar face into the planning process, and a go-to contact for residents.
“We need a person we can hold accountable,” Adams said. “Why would we listen if the person facilitating is not familiar?”
Adams can recall playing in ping pong tournaments and basketball games with his friends who also grew up at MLK Park in the ‘70s. He said one of the biggest needs of the park is an outdoor basketball court, which was removed in 1998 and never restored.
Although the community center contains an indoor court, multiple residents said that the facility is almost always being used by the Boys and Girls Club, and locked when it’s not.
“If you go to Signal Hill Park, you’ll find all the kids from here playing on those courts,” Adams said. “We’re long overdue for any improvements … let’s start with something small, something we can identify that we’re going to work on.”
Older residents called for the restoration of the Peace Garden, which was created in 2010 through funding from the Neighborhood Partners Program. The garden was created to build intergenerational relationships between the seniors and youth at the park while they gardened, cooked and told stories together.
The garden later received grants from the City to keep it going, but lost its funding during the COVID-19 pandemic.
MLK Park lies in the heart of the sixth district, an area Black residents were disproportionately funneled into due to racist legal restrictions passed by the Federal Housing Association in 1934. The FHA deemed large parts of the city as “too risky” for developers to invest in, creating a gap in services and resources provided in Central, North and West Long Beach.
Many attendees were witness to the park’s creation in 1964—then dubbed the 19th Street Playground—as well as its many expansions and improvements throughout the ‘80s, including a swimming pool, recreation center, ball field, game courts and central facility center, which includes City health programs and offices for the 6th district office staff.
A Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Needs Assessment from 2016 revealed the area surrounding MLK Park has a high “park need” rating, as does most of the sixth district.
The most recent renovation to the park was from NBA player Stephen Curry and Long Beach native Snoop Dogg in August, when they revealed the newly renovated indoor basketball court for the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach. Two years before that, the park received a swing set.
In recent years, the MLK Park has become more known for its issues than its accomplishments, as many residents pointed out. The statue of Martin Luther King Jr., which welcomes residents as they enter the park, remains discolored from a vandalism incident that occured in July of 2021.
Residents pointed out that the statue is the only one of King Jr. in the United States west of the Mississippi River.
A timeline presented at the kick-off event says that the plan for MLK Park will be officially adopted by summer of 2023.
“The issue is that we had 50 years of African-American political dominance in this neighborhood and now we don’t,” Kenfe said. “[…] You cannot bring stakeholders to the table that are not welcome there.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article stated that Suely Saro’s office did not respond to questions regarding the park visioning event. Editor’s learned post-publication that Saro’s office did not receive the questions from The Signal Tribune.
