Construction began last weekend on Signal Hill’s newest planned park, currently called View Park, with a groundbreaking ceremony July 24.
The narrow 1.8-acre park will run along Cherry Avenue from Burnett Street to N. Legion Drive, intersecting the cul-de-sac of E. Creston Avenue. It will feature natural landscaping with a lighted walking trail connected to Signal Hill’s wider trails system.
Since the site has a downward slope, the park will also feature a stormwater-infiltration system, or “dry wells,” to help prevent water runoff.
Most of the park’s $3.3-million construction tab is funded by a $2.4-million grant from the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, whose mission is to preserve open space for low-impact recreation and educational uses, wildlife habitat restoration and protection, and watershed improvements.
The City expects construction to be completed by March 2022. The park will then open daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. It will not have restrooms and visitors can park on E. Creston Avenue.
Possible renaming of View Park to Remembrance Park
As visitors walk the park’s trail and enjoy its views, Signal Hill Vice Mayor Keir Jones told the Signal Tribune he would like to offer them snippets of Signal Hill history. He would like the park renamed Remembrance Park and have it feature educational markers on the city’s significant moments and people.
As part of its funding grant, the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy already requires educational components on the park’s natural habitat and water sustainability feature to be built into the park’s downward slope.
Along the upward slope, Jones envisions markers on Signal Hill’s history, such as about the Indigenous Puva tribe who first settled there; Mrs. Jessie Nelson chosen as the city’s first mayor in 1924, soon after women got the right to vote; the 1958 Hancock Oil Co. fire that killed two workers and burned for two days; and CSULB football star Ron Settles, who died in police custody in 1981.
Jones noted that City Hall has artifacts about the Hancock explosion that say, “Never forget the Hancock fire,” but most locals know nothing about it.
“I was feeling like we could have a place where we could remember all of these things in history and what got us to this point today so that we don’t repeat them,” he said.
It would also give the park more significance, Jones said, similar to features in Hilltop Park and Discovery Well Park commemorating the area’s Indigenous peoples and oil discovery. The new park’s focus could look back but also look forward from the city’s oil legacy to a more sustainable future.
“We want to talk about where we’re going,” Jones said. “We can have that dialogue through where we’ve been, with what we remember as being significant, to get us to where we’re trying to go.”
Since the City has already planned the park with educational components on sustainability, the remembrance component could be added to that education without much further cost, Jones said.
“From a budget perspective, we’re not expecting it to be a significant change to what’s already been allocated,” he said.
The Signal Hill City Council decided at its July 27 meeting that it would agendize Jones’s proposal to rename the park and add historical features. Jones said that would likely happen at the council’s next meeting on Aug. 10.
The council might also have other ideas for the park, Jones said, such as one Councilmember Lori Woods told him of naming the knoll in the park after former Councilmember Mike Knoll and calling it “Knoll’s Knoll.”
“There are lots of opportunities to remember people, remember moments, memorialize things, and in a nice, natural setting,” Jones said. “We’re talking about simple things that are understated but will be educational.”
The next Signal Hill City Council meeting will take place virtually at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 10. For information on viewing and participating, visit cityofsignalhill.org/79/City-Council.
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