There’s an empty lot near the corner of Home Avenue and Euclid that lies along a creek bed. It’s covered with wild yellow flowers and tall grasses. One weekday morning City Council president Tony Young joined me at the spot to tell me what this vacant lot is going to become.
“And what you’re going to see in the future is a brand new park,” said Young.
It’ll have a playground, places to barbecue and a place to run your dog. It’ll be named Charles Lewis III Memorial Park, after the former District 4 councilman who died in 2004… a man Tony Young said was his best friend. He said the park named for him will fill a void.
“If you look around, there’s not a park anywhere close to this area. And also you have a lot of apartment complexes that don’t have a lot of green space or yards so this is essentially going to be theirs,” he said.
The long hours of summer mean long hours for parks. But in the middle of San Diego, park space is short.
Charles Lewis Park will be located in greater City Heights. It’s an old part of town. It’s low income and populated by lots of immigrants. Matthew Hervy is with Price Charities and he has studied park space in City Heights.
Hervy estimates the area’s population is about 80,000 people, and city guidelines say there should be 2.8 acres of parkland for every 1,000 people.
“So if you do the math, there should be 229 acres of usable parkland,” he said. “What we found is it was significantly less.”
About a hundred acres less, give or take, depending on what exactly you consider usable parkland.
Charles Lewis Park, which Young expects to break ground next year, shows how hard it can be to take a step in the right direction. The location was approved as a city park shortly before Charles Lewis died.
In other words, it will have taken nearly ten years to cobble together the money to make it happen. All that, for a park that will be less than 2 acres large.
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