Susan Cloke
Columnist
Santa Monica Mirror
Santa Monica is having an identity crisis. This city of 80,000 plus residents is internationally
known for its ethos, life style, commitment to principles of sustainability and
love of art, as much as its beaches and weather.
From its beginning the City was the landscape
for the creativity and imagination of the people. They built neighborhoods of wonderful bungalow houses with
front porches and neighborhoods of elegant craftsman houses on wide streets
planted with majestic palms. Entrepreneurs
brought their energy to the City and built the Santa Monica Pier, started the
Paddleboard Races, opened restaurants and stores and businesses. It wasn’t all perfect. The City had its seamy side and there
were disasters but overall the City thrived in the energy of its people and the
natural beauty of the beaches of the Pacific Ocean and the mostly balmy
weather.
This image of the City is now giving way to the
demands of a new scale of development and a faster pace of life. And it is the pressure, the push of new
development and the faster pace of life that is pushing the current identity
crisis.
The flashpoint for this is the internationally
recognized and iconic Palisades Park.
The Park is the grand promenade of the City. A park of scenic vistas planted with specimen trees where people
can find shade in a historic pergola.
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| Palisades Park Pergola at Sunset |
Once Palisades Park was where people went to
stroll, to watch the sun set over the Pacific, to picnic or to sit on a park
bench and read. In our time it
became a park for joggers and is now the end point of the Los Angeles
Marathon.
Recently for-profit, professional trainers decided
to offer classes in Palisades Park. They brought heavy equipment, tied exercise
bands to trees and made the park a more crowded and louder place. Residents were concerned and took their complaints
about the fitness trainers in Palisades Park to City Hall.
The Council responded, seeing it as a matter of
needing to create a citywide ordinance governing commercial fitness trainers in
all parks. A proper response to
the ongoing problem of sharing public open space in a City with more demand for
parks and playing fields than the City can currently provide.
But the concerns being expressed are about more
than the appropriate regulation of trainers in the parks. These concerns go to the heart of the
identity crisis. What is being
asked is: Which parts of the City’s built environment are we willing to change
to accommodate the pressures of this faster pace of life and which will be kept
as they are?
Palisades Park is the flashpoint because it’s a
public park of significance, of memory and of history. Changing the character of the park goes
to the core question of how the City Council will understand and govern given
the pressures for changing the scale and the pace of the City.
At the Council hearing of April 23, Margaret
Bach, representing the City Landmarks Commission, spoke about the need for “stewardship
and protection of the City’s only landmarked park.”
Bach went on to say, “It is a uniquely configured park– a
narrow, linear park at the edge of fragile bluffs over looking the Pacific, 14
blocks long covering more than 26 acres. A destination for locals and visitors
alike, it serves as a veritable museum of the history of the city. The park's
evolution over the decades embodies its original public purpose.
“Preserving Palisades Park for public enjoyment,
prohibiting equipment that can damage the park's many features, and clarifying
the current regulation that prohibits commercial activity within the park ---
these three objectives constitute the most appropriate, practical and fiscally
prudent approach to a regulatory structure for this world-class resource. We
are counting on the city to continue to be the responsible stewards of
Palisades Park. Our landmark park is unique among parks in Santa Monica. It
deserves special consideration and protection.”
In writing this article I spoke with several
Council Members. They are rightfully
proud of the parks we have. They all
talked about wanting to build more parks, to make sure good parks are within
walking distance of every residence, that there are more playing fields and
more opportunities for people to exercise and to enjoy being outdoors.
The City is committed to supporting an active
lifestyle and that includes fitness trainers and classes. Council Members directed staff to
negotiate a compromise regulating the commercial trainers and to prepare
regulations for review.
The carefully crafted Staff Report to the
Council looks at all the City Parks. It recommends a series of regulations for commercial fitness
trainers, including permit and license requirements, locations, conditions of
use and so on. In some of the City
Parks Staff recommends no commercial fitness training be allowed, in some parks
Staff recommends 1 on 1 or 1 on 2 commercial fitness classes be allowed, and other
parks would allow commercial fitness with a trainer and groups. The staff report recommends
allowing commercial fitness trainers in both Palisades Park and the upcoming
parks at City Hall with the condition that they limit their classes in those
parks to 1 or 2 people. The
details will be spelled out in a new Ordinance scheduled to come to Council in
June.
Certainly fitness classes should follow the
rules of urban politeness: share the park, protect the landscape and the
furniture and buildings, clean up after themselves and in general be good
citizens.
Trainers and the clients for the commercial
fitness classes have participated in the crafting of the regulations and
agree. The one place where they
disagree is they want to continue to hold group classes in Palisades Park. They like Palisades Park best for its
ease of parking, for its views and because people know it.
Stroller Strides, now called FIT4MOM, is a
national franchise. According to
the testimony they gave at the Council hearing it’s a great program made
greater by being in Palisades Park. But why wouldn’t it be a great program at
the beautiful Annenberg Community Beach House, which has great amenities, ample
parking and wonderful beach views; or Airport Park or Virginia Avenue Park,
which are both great spaces and have ample parking. I understand surf camps need the ocean and tennis classes
need tennis courts. But fitness
classes don’t “need” Palisades Park.
Fitness training is a good thing. Any one wishing to train in any city
park is allowed as long as it’s not for profit. The proposed regulations won’t change that. The proposed regulations only address
for-profit fitness trainers. In appropriate park locations the main concern
with for-profit fitness training is that it’s pricey and that excludes many
people who would like to participate.
There are ways around this problem. Other Southern California cities run
their own fitness programs, making it financially possible for many more people
to participate. If the trainers
want the benefit of public property maybe their fees should be regulated to be
inline with the fees of Santa Monica’s other recreation programs? Or maybe there’s a better answer? Affordability is a problem the Council should
consider in the context of the use of public property for private profit.
Even with good regulations and good will on all
sides, when I listen to the conversation about commercial fitness trainers in
Palisades Park I hear people asking that a line be drawn and that the trainers
not be allowed in Palisades Park, the grandest of our parks, and that the
Council recognize and honor the history, the geography, the ecology and the
iconography of the park.
What Say You?
