East Palo Alto adds needed parkland

From the city with too much parkland to East Palo Alto:  "Add the shuttle, and you'll be almost as cool as Pacifica."

Palo Alto Daily News/Bonnie Eslinger, 4/10/12.

 

Cooley Landing Project

"A $5 million state grant will enable East Palo Alto to cover the last phases of Cooley Landing's transformation into a park. "The focus now changes from additional fundraising to execution," Cooley Landing Project Manager Shannon Alford said Monday. "You can only imagine how thrilled we are here at the city. It's not every day you get $5 million."   The state parks grant will cover half of the project's estimated $10 million cost. The rest is to be paid for by $500,000 in city money and a mix of federal, state, nonprofit and foundation funding.

Located at the end of Bay Road, Cooley Landing once was used as a dump site. Today, a $2 million cleanup of the area's toxic soil is almost complete and the city hopes to open its planned 9-acre park this summer.

"We will have picnic areas, a trail system with benches and places for quiet reflection, and a vehicle access roundabout," Alford said. "And we'll have nice native vegetation, drought-tolerant, throughout the park."
Future phases of the park project will involve vehicle access improvements, construction of an outdoor classroom, renovation of a former boathouse into a "nature and education facility" and additional trails with interpretive signs.

The state funding ensures that these elements of Cooley Landing will be completed, Alford said.
The funding was announced by the California Department of Parks and Recreation on March 26, and comes as part of a program to support the creation of new parks and recreation facilities in "critically underserved communities throughout California," according to the state's website.

In San Mateo County, East Palo Alto has the lowest ratio of municipal parks per capita among equally dense cities, with half an acre of parkland per 1,000 residents, according to city documents. The state's recommended standard is three acres of parkland per 1,000 residents. Cooley Landing would increase the city's parkland by more than 50 percent. "I am especially looking forward to the new nature education building," East Palo Alto Mayor Laura Martinez said in a written statement. "Families and schoolchildren will benefit tremendously from this beautiful space right on the bay."

Posted by Kathy Meeh