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High Hopes

Overlooking the gritty landscape of East Los Angeles, a new Audubon center is changing the neighborhood's face and outlook. Locals are learning to love this hilly haven for wildlife and people as never before.

By Dan Koeppel
Photography by Rob Howard

The Audubon Center at Debs Park is officially one of the most environmentally friendly buildings in the nation.

Where were the schoolchildren? It was a warm November morning in East Los Angeles. From the hillside, Elsa Lopez pointed out landmarks—the downtown skyline, the San Gabriel Mountains—to the visiting local politicians, city officials, and neighborhood activists as they made their way through walnut trees and coastal sagebrush. But the children, first to fourth graders, 160 of them, hadn't appeared. And since the neighborhood's kids were the reason Lopez and her colleagues had labored for five years to transform a nearly forgotten city park into a vital habitat, she was a little concerned.

The kids, as it turned out, were three miles away. They had spent the first part of the morning waiting at their school for the buses that had been hired to transport them to the official opening of the Audubon Center at Ernest E. Debs Park. The children had seen the facility rise from nothing. They had watched new trails appear and wildlife habitats be restored. Even if the buses hadn't shown up, the kids weren't going to miss out on the celebration. So they told Marcos Aguilar, their principal at Academia Semillas del Pueblo charter school, what they intended to do. "They said," Aguilar recalls, "they were going to march."

A few of the students carried drums, to accompany a small presentation at the ceremony; the march began with percussion. The kids—dressed in their yellow-and-black or red-and-black school uniforms—made their way past mini malls and Laundromats, tire shops and grocery stores, heading toward the largest parcel of open space most of them had ever visited: Debs Park.

Tucked between the Pasadena Freeway and the northeastern neighborhoods of East Los Angeles, the park's centerline is a well-pitched ridge, 500 feet high. Debs Park's eastern half has always been busy, with playgrounds, parking lots, and an occasional petting zoo. But its western side has seen little use since opening in 1952. Initially, it hosted soapbox derbies; more recently its secluded lower reaches became a haunt of prostitutes. The area's loneliness had allowed it to grow wild. Today the last stands of coastal sage in this part of Los Angeles survive amid patches of black walnut, blue elderberry, and toyon; snakes, lizards, rabbits, and coyotes move through the firebreaks.

Center director Elsa Lopez spent her youth exploring the slopes of Debs Park and then returned as an adult to share its natural marvels with others.

It took the children more than two hours to reach the east side of Debs Park. Aguilar led them through the parking lot, past the soccer fields, toward the hill. They began to climb, drumming louder as they went. Lopez and her visitors heard the pounding above the roar of the freeway, a quarter-mile away. Almost simultaneously, they looked to the hillside. "It was an incredible sight," says Lopez. "The older kids, all in yellow, spread out along the ridge, coming toward us." A red-tailed hawk circled above them. "Everybody had the same thought," says Aguilar. "This was a welcome."

A few days later Lopez climbs the same ridge. She has just stepped out of her office at the Audubon center, where she serves as the director. "I was lucky enough to be able to do this when I was younger," she says. "Most people who grew up around here haven't had that opportunity." For Lopez and her eight brothers and sisters, Debs Park provided a steady exposure to nature. She gestures toward the slope. "We'd walk up this same hill," Lopez says with a sense of mischief, "and slide down on cardboard boxes."

While there won't be any scheduled carton surfing at the refurbished Debs Park, Lopez's mission hinges upon today's neighborhood kids having as much fun on the hillside as she did. Debs Park may offer them their only chance to feel the soft earth of a hiking trail instead of the hard pavement of a sidewalk. The surrounding neighborhoods of Highland Park and Boyle Heights are the city's most crowded; the population density, at more than 25,000 people per square mile, is nearly four times the average citywide. More than half of local households consist of four or more people. Ninety-four percent of the residents in Boyle Heights are Latino.

A lack of facilities has certainly limited the community's opportunities for outdoor recreation. But so have time and money. In many families both parents work—often several jobs. Median incomes are low, less than $20,000 in one neighborhood close to the center.

From the top of the hill, the surrounding area appears as a thickly built patchwork—highways and railroads, freight yards, and street after street of low-slung houses, schools, and churches. The most surprising aspect of the view, though, is that it exists at all. Over the years investment has tilted toward the city's well-heeled west side; hilltops have been leveled and transformed into everything from museums (like the Getty Center, built in the Santa Monica Mountains) to planned communities and shopping malls. With the city's east side largely ignored, Debs Park escaped the pressures that might otherwise have caused it to vanish. The irony isn't lost on Lopez: "We were forgotten so long we were practically untouched. The park was a blank slate."

For the center's younger visitors, the courtyard pond is a treasure trove, holding such delights as dragonflies about to hatch.

At first there were little more than blank stares. Folks living in Highland Park weren't exactly unhappy t6o see the old Chiquita Market close down—it had become a gang hangout—but the new tenants seemed more than a bit out of place. Audubon wanted to lay the groundwork for a new nature center at Debs Park, and so in 1997—with a community conference room and a store-window diorama of birds and butterflies—Melanie Ingalls opened shop: a white woman, representing an environmental group hardly anyone had heard of, making plans and promises.

Almost immediately came the rumors: Debs Park would be closed. It would become a private wildlife sanctuary. Only wealthy folks could enter. "It wasn't the welcome I expected," says Ingalls, then the senior program director for Audubon California. Even her neighbors were wary: A half-smile was the best she could manage out of a man who lived next door. "I'd say hello every day," she says, "but he never opened up."

What was going on? Building a nature center in the community seemed like a great idea—something nobody could object to. "The problem," Lopez explains, "is that we get plenty of 'great ideas' around here." One of those was a toxin-spewing incinerator project, posing as a jobs program, proposed for a residential neighborhood. Lopez helped to successfully fight the incinerator in 1987, when she was involved with Mothers of East Los Angeles, an activist group her own mother helped found in order to prevent a prison from being built just a few blocks from Debs Park.

Under such circumstances, credibility arrives slowly. For two years Ingalls attended community meetings and talked to everyone she could. Michael Perez, a computer programmer who lives just across the street, was one of the first in the neighborhood to be won over. Like Lopez, Perez had grown up playing in Debs Park; when he heard about Audubon's plan, he rushed to the storefront. Proposals to remove graffiti and refurbish the park's hiking trails sounded great, he says, but what really convinced him were plans to restore the 282-acre facility's habitat. "That's what's going to get people's hands in the dirt and give them something to cherish," he says.
The project will begin with native plants, which neighborhood kids will help grow in the center's Children's Woodland. As I talk with Perez, his three-year-old daughter, Marissa, skips ahead on the rebuilt trail we are walking. It loops through a deep ravine along the facility's southern edge, vanishing into shaded groves of walnut and oak. Every few feet she stops to point out a lizard, or to pick up trash.

Through the Audubon center's Family Backpack Program, visitors can borrow books in English and Spanish to enjoy throughout Debs Park.

One by one, people who loved the park, feared it, or didn't even know it existed started to accept the idea. Ingalls began to spend her time navigating the knotted Los Angeles city bureaucracy. Elsa Lopez's arrival—first as a volunteer and a board member, then as center director—reassured community leaders and local politicians. Permits were issued. Funds were allocated. But even as the official elements fell into place, Ingalls remained uncertain. There was so much at stake, so much that could go wrong.

When did she feel secure? It was on a spring afternoon in 2000. On that day she had changed the window again to feature local insects, displaying their names on cards. Not long after, she noticed her neighbor—the one who never spoke—staring into the glass. It took a few days for him to finally come in. When he did, he arrived with a simple question: "Why do they call it a Jerusalem cricket?"

"We had him," Ingalls says. "It was going to work."

"Do you know what's behind the gates?" Irene Gonzalez asks shoppers waiting on line at a local grocery store, trying to spark their interest. Gonzalez, a retired bank worker, is one of the Audubon center's busiest volunteers. Like most, she at first thought the project would exclude her. ("I expected a lot of old folks with binoculars," she says.) But once convinced it was real, she became, says Lopez, "unstoppable." On a weekday afternoon, Gonzalez moves up and down Figueroa Street—the segment of legendary Route 66 that has become the area's main shopping strip—singing the park's praises.

At the grand opening, Gonzalez looked on as a young boy—wearing a backpack filled with an insect net, a magnifying glass, and watercolor paints (kids can borrow them from Audubon as they enter)—knelt near a tiny pond, staring at dragonflies. The boy's grandmother stood a few feet away, smiling, watching quietly. She came from Mexico in the 1960s and is one of Gonzalez's street-corner converts. I am introduced, but the woman is too modest to give her name, offering only a simple, nostalgic recollection: "When I was a girl, I knew the name of every bird."

The ravine along the Butterfly Loop Trail.

Vivid but faded memories of nature draw the elderly to Debs Park, where 138 species of birds thrive. And, as this woman knows, there's also joy in witnessing the discoveries of youth. Multiple generations of a single family will often visit Debs Park together; it has become a welcome challenge for the center to design programming that spans all ages.

The Audubon's center's Picnic gazebo and courtyard

A recent Los Angeles Times editorial celebrated Debs Park, while answering the question Gonzalez poses: ". . . once you're through the black iron gates embellished with hummingbirds and butterflies, the bustling natural world comes into focus." Park visitors go on nighttime hikes to learn about astronomy; they take painting classes, learn how to cook native plants, and hear stories told by descendants of the area's Gabrielino Indians. "Fifty thousand children live within two miles, many of them part of poor working families along the city's gritty industrial edge," the editorial continued. "The park itself has long been an underused jewel."

I'm not the kind of California immigrant whom Debs Park primarily serves. Like many middle-class transplants, I came here for the lifestyle—the beach, the mountains—rather than economic opportunity. And though I live less than five minutes from Debs Park and have passed it hundreds of times, I never paid it much attention as I sped up the freeway to look for birds or to ride my bike just north of there. One of the best ways to understand the center's ineffable pull, everyone says, is to hike to the top of the hill, where the city encircling the park shows just what an oasis the tiny patch of open space really is.

My own journey took place on a typical Los Angeles afternoon; not humid, but bright and hot, with a bit of gusty breeze—the kind of day that makes for sweaty walking but rewards the effort with clear, smog-free views. I made my way up the center's City View Trail, which winds above the newly built Audubon center and offers sprawling vistas as it switches back, curving toward the park's highest point. But it wasn't the contrast of sight that hit me. It was the sound. In Los Angeles—especially in the more urban neighborhoods—freeway noise is a constant. While some people imagine the roar is actually the ocean, others just grow accustomed to it, allowing it to fade into the background. I fall into the latter category, and so as I climbed I hardly noticed the din of cars and trucks trundling in and out of downtown.

What I noticed was when the sound disappeared. It happened just after the first switchback. The trail nosed behind a cluster of trees. The hillside, as I turned, now formed a barrier; just 10 feet of dirt, and the sound of all those cars muffled. It almost vanished. This is something everybody needs, I thought. In the quiet, I could observe coyote tracks, chaparral honeysuckle, even the soil's varying colors. Standing at that spot—and stepping out, as the manmade world reasserts itself—makes a strong case for Debs Park being just as important as acres of forest, as miles of coastline. Over the next few years Spanish will become the region's most common language. The neighborhoods surrounding Debs Park will become more vibrant, more crowded. And more in need.

For years Lopez has been taking local kids—many of them gang members who've spent time in youth incarceration facilities—on camping trips. She's seen what nature does: "It scares them. Then they let their guard down. They become kids again." Instead of regarding one another with tough suspicion, they actually begin playing.

Taking every schoolchild in East Los Angeles camping is impossible. Bringing each one to Debs Park? That's doable.

When I asked about teenagers, Lopez told me about a 17-year-old named Juan. He'd been trying hard to keep out of gangs, so he had decided to join the Marine Corps, or maybe go into law enforcement. I didn't think much about this until, on a recent park visit, I watched a young volunteer in a red T-shirt. He had the close-cropped hair and baggy pants that are a uniform for many of the city's high school kids; there was a trace of mustache above his lip. He was showing a gopher snake to visitors—handling it gently but with a sort of macho "look at me with the snake" demeanor. He explained to me that he'd agreed to work at the park only so he could spend more time with his girlfriend, who was also a volunteer. But over time he had come to love it there, even though he had never experienced anything like it.

"I thought nature was someplace dangerous, almost," he said, before launching into a brilliant, teens-only explanation of the importance of understanding the outdoors: "Going to a concert is great, but it's even better when you know who's playing and what the songs are called." When I asked about his ambitions, I realized he was the young man Lopez had mentioned. He talked about the military and the police, and why those career choices attracted him: "Protecting people," he said. "But," he added tentatively, "there are other ways to protect." His eyes widened a bit, as if trying out the idea before actually speaking it, to see if it fit. "Maybe," he said, "if I protect nature, that's a way to protect people, too."

 

Dan Koeppel is a Los Angeles–based nature and outdoor writer. A book based on "The List," his October 2000 Audubon feature, which described his father's successful effort to see 7,000 bird species, will be published in July 2005 by Penguin-Putnam.

Green From the Ground Up

At first glance, the Audubon Center at Ernest E. Debs Park may not look like one of the greenest buildings in America. Visitors can't see the solar panels that, lying flat against the roof, power the building and everything in it. Though the toilets flush with water treated on-site, and use half the water of the most efficient models, the bathrooms appear perfectly standard.

But look closer. Nearly every item a visitor encounters in the nature center—cabinets made of crushed sunflower seeds, linoleum counters recycled from old tires, carpet fibers extracted from the Mexican agave plant—is in fact made from sustainable resources.

The Debs Park center is the first building in the country to receive the U.S. Green Building Council's Platinum Rating under its new rating system—the highest possible award from the nation's leading authority on sustainable building practices. Earning this distinction wasn't easy. To start with, more than 50 percent of the building materials were locally manufactured, and more than 90 percent of the construction debris created was then recycled. The structure's concrete consists of fly ash recycled from the burning of coal; the steel rebar within the concrete is made from melted-down firearms, obtained from a trade-in program run by the city of Los Angeles.

Designed to ease pressure on water- and energy-stressed California, the Debs Park nature center functions entirely off the sewer and power grid—the first public building in Los Angeles to do so. Its location has been calculated to take advantage of ventilation, helped along by high-efficiency fans. Exposed interior walls keep the temperature moderate; solar-powered heating and cooling systems kick in only when necessary. Windows provide maximum natural light and efficient insulation.

Walk through the center's doors and you'll find a courtyard that's been equally well-thought-out. Western sycamores shade the building, and California grape shades an arch leading to the Children's Woodland. A recirculating, solar-powered fountain offers a respite to wildlife. A few steps farther and a sustainably certified wooden tower offers a view of the children's garden, which highlights native plant communities as they change throughout the seasons. By experiencing the Audubon Center at Debs Park, visitors big and small can take home an important lesson about living in balance with the local environment. After all, says the center's director, Elsa Lopez, the building should not just be one you learn in, but learn from.

—D.K.