LET'S CONNECT FACE TO FACE

Join us as we once again meet face-to-face at Taglyan Cultural Center in Hollywood to celebrate For the Love of Hollywood Gala: Reconnecting Communities benefitting the Friends of the Hollywood Central Park.
See you there!

Sometimes, the only realists are the dreamers.

– Paul Wellstone

Facts and Benefits

The Facts

More than 180,000 people, including 40,000 children live within just one mile of the proposed park

Hollywood has 0.005 acres of open space per resident as compared to 0.012 acres of open space within the City of Los Angeles and is one of the lowest resident-to-park space communities in California

Two-thirds of children in Los Angeles do not live near a park, playground, or other safe place to play. By comparison, New York City’s parks are much more equitably distributed with more than 91 percent of its children living within walking distance of a park

The median income for this one-mile area is $23,481—nearly half the region’s median income level. In addition, 75.2 percent of this one square-mile population is non-white minorities with 53.3 percent of Hispanic ethnicity

Existing park space is disproportionately concentrated in the region’s wealthy neighborhoods. As a result, Latino, African-American, and Asian Pacific Islander youth are dramatically less likely than their White counterparts to enjoy access to open space, playgrounds, and other exercise facilities

The Benefits

Community

Promotes equity

Provides green open space and recreational facilities to more than 40,000 children

Promotes public health and encourages active lifestyles

Reunites diverse communities and dense neighborhoods, separated for more than 60 years, by the Hollywood Freeway

Provides an exemplary illustration of efficient and innovative alternative land use

Strategies and outcomes serve as a national model for the creation of new green open space in a dense urban environment

Economy

Creates more than 38,000 direct and indirect jobs, including 30% entry level and apprenticeship programs and local hire

Provides an economic stimulus for investment in resource efficient infill development

Increases tourism

Energy and the Environment

Improves air quality and reduces global warming

Reduces automobile usage and fuel consumption, green house gas emissions and promotes energy efficiency and conservation

Creates a transit oriented development

Utilizes 21st Century cutting-edge environmental technologies

Infrastructure Improvements

Streamlines freeway functioning

Improves freeway overpasses

Freeway 'CAP' Park Gains Momentum

For years it may have seemed little more than a dream: a 44-acre expanse of green, public space covering a mile of the congested 101 Freeway as it chugs through the heart of Hollywood.

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IOBY (In Our Back Yard)

David Carrera is a general pain-in-the-ass and cranky pants resident of Hollywood of 30 years. Originally from Northern California, Hollywood is now home where he lives with his wife and where they are raising their daughter. Much to the chagrin of his wife, Hollywood might be the place where he grows old and perfects the art of “you kids get off my lawn” and “back in my day….”. He most enjoys spending his time hanging with his family and getting out into nature.

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Partnerships

Anthony-Paul (AP) Diaz is the Executive Officer and Chief of Staff for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks (RAP). He is responsible for helping to manage and oversee all day to day operations of the Department, while assisting in all governance and leadership matters related to the Park's Commission, City Council, City Attorney and Mayor's Offices.

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What We’ve Been Up to

It is with a heavy heart that I join my FHCP Board colleagues in grieving the loss of our founding Board Member Edward V. Hunt. FHCP was founded because of Edward Hunt’s desire to create more green open space in Hollywood. And his idea? Cover the Hollywood Freeway with a Park! Edward was relentless in his passion to rid our community of scar that the Hollywood Freeway is on our landscape.

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