by Mark Kemple
30th Street Resident, Manhattan Beach
In Manhattan Beach’s tree section there is a little pocket park with a little greenbelt and playground for kids. It was built in 1964 by the neighbors who surround it. It’s a pocket park. There are no traffic arteries leading to it. And there is no parking structure. Why would there be?
Like much of the tree section, that little park abuts a large dune. So the neighbors named it “Sand Dune Park.”
Some now want to take use the dune at Sand dune Park to create a regional work out facility. When it was last used this way, it attracted 9,000 athletes per month – way over any prior usage – and it was declared a public nuisance. Since that time, it has gained even more publicity, having been featured after its closure in Sports Illustrated and Men’s Health Magazine, as one of the nation’s best “free” work out spots.
If you were a city planner, here are the questions you must ask and answer.
Do these dune workout proponents propose to widen the roads of this little neighborhood, or create new through ways for this unintended usage? Answer: No.
New parking? Answer: No.
Can proponents claim this dune to be a natural feature, and therefore simply enjoyment of Nature’s gifts? Answer: No. To re-create this dune-as-workout-facility every few weeks, huge and noisy trucks that greatly exceed the weight capacity of these streets must to scoop sand from the bottom and place it at the top. Look to the left or right of this dune, for the natural dunes.
Is its maintenance free? Answer: No. Apart from the trucks and sand relocation, city personnel must be hired, trained and deployed. This comes to about $130,000 per year, using the most conservative estimates. On top of this, the police department makes a disproportionate number of visits to this site when used in this fashion. Such usage costs this City a fortune, in a recession no less, and to say nothing of the tension and distraction in the community caused by it. The mess caused by such usage has been on the City Council’s plate for 12 years.
Is the workout free? Answer: Far from it. Apart from everything above, home values surrounding the dune when used in this fashion are about 15 percent below comparable homes. That’s about $100K to $200K per home in this area, that we pay for, for others’ so-called “free-workouts.” And to be clear, Sand Dune Park was not used this way when we moved here. Attendance has skyrocketed – a 50 percent increase in July ’09 alone. By the City’s estimate, usage is now 9,000 per month, and that discounts the figure by one third on the assumption that one in three users exercise on the dune for more than an hour and therefore have been counted twice. (Yeah, right. Ever tried to climb the dune for a solid hour?) And there is now a huge internet awareness of, and resulting desire to use, this facility, to say nothing of its post-closing features in national print media. The concerns addressed by the City Council in 1998 and 2002 (when usage was about 3,000 per month) are quaint by comparison to the issues we face today.
Is this workout safe? Answer: No. Look at the sharp cliff of sand created at the bottom of the dune every time these huge trucks scoop sand from the bottom and place it at the top. One trembler and our children can be buried. Years ago there was a cave in at the top, and a child was buried alive. She survived through use of pipes to get air to the child as neighbors frantically dug for her life. Are you willing to take this chance with our children?
In addition, the dune is literally collapsing every day. Six to eight feet of sand have been lost from the dune (not to Waikiki Beach). It is now convex, with the relatively hard base of the dune at the top approaching vertical when exposed. As that base becomes steeper, the sand moves faster, and the structure is increasingly compromised. That erosion is documented. But has anyone ever studied this usage for its environmental impact and safety? Which brings us to the next question.
Has this usage been properly studied? Answer: No. No proponent even proposes an environmental impact report, traffic study or other study before opening some dune workout facility. This is insanity.
Is the proposal supported by even an ounce of common sense? Answer: No. Ask yourself, if the dune workout facility had never been opened before, would any City planner in his or her right mind be discussing opening it now, in this location, knowing what we know? Of course not. This is a land use incongruence.
This is not a Sacred Cow. And yet, at root, the only argument to open this facility in this neighborhood is akin to Dune Worship. These people believe it a “shame” to “close” this “natural” feature to such use, and feel the neighborhood should just take whatever it must to allow the Great Dune to achieve its Great Purpose. This misconceives rational land use.
Simply, creating this facility in this neighborhood is like jamming a square peg in a round hole. The neighborhood is not built for it. To say we have to do this “because it’s here” is moronic. It is not nature, and is only “here” when we create it at great expense. Nature park; kid park; botanical garden; let it grow over; leave it clean but prohibit exercise; these are all inexpensive and great uses that, most importantly, fit its setting in that little neighborhood and beside that child’s park.
Allow this to stay the pocket park that the surrounding area is built for, and end this long and absurd debate about jamming that huge peg up our neighborhood. ER
