Case Study
Before being developed into its end-use as a world-class state park ( Los Angeles State Historic Park ), the property has been used for two interim use projects - a public art piece, and a State-operated interim use public park. To prepare the site for interim use projects, California State Parks partnered with the City of Los Angeles to coordinate the cleaning of the site. After over 100 years of rail activity, the property had become contaminated with certain hazardous materials that would pose a threat to public users. After the site was cleaned of its contaminants, the interim use projects began.

The first interim use of the site was conducted by Farmlab, and is commonly known as the Not A Cornfield project - a physical art project by artist, and Annenberg Foundation trustee, Lauren Bon. The project was funded entirely by the Annenberg Foundation, and entailed Bon using the site to grow a field of corn on the site, and harvest it for one growing season. The project took place over the course of 18 months from 2004 to 2006, during which time the site was also used for weekly educational programming and included a native demonstration garden. The spectacular sight of the cornfield garnered national media attention for its innovation and design, and has made the site a regional icon of public green space and environmental programming. Farmlab continues to be heavily involved with the park space and has been a helpful resource in attracting community input to the end-use park planning process. Bon's Not A Cornfield project is an example of an interim use that is active in incorporating the visions of the surrounding community, and incorporating them into the interim use project. "We didn't have the funds at the time, but she was able to beautify the site and really energize it with public programming" said Sean Woods, the Los Angeles Superintendent of California State Parks. "She put a lot of effort and time into bringing in people from the local community - she even hired a lot of people from the local community who remain with her today" he said.

In addition to making local-hires during the project, Bon hired oral historians to interview original residents of the surrounding neighborhoods of Chinatown , Lincoln Heights , Chavez Ravine, and Solano Canyon in order to give the project proper historical context. Bon's Not A Cornfield project revitalized the site, made it an interactive space for an under-served community, constructed public art, and accomplished it all with private funding and public motivation. After the project completed its 18-month harvest, Bon and her team created Farmlab (an organization headquartered across the street from the site) which focuses on a multitude of environmental and land use issues related to sustainability, livability, and health. Farmlab has continued it's relationship with the park, and currently has a project on the site called the Anabolic Monument , which is a 60-meter wide circle constructed of decaying corn bales left over from the Not A Cornfield project.

The second interim use project on the site has transformed the site into Los Angeles State Historic Park - a 13-acre Interim Use Public Park (IPU). The park opened in 2006, following the Not A Cornfield project and provides the community with a stunning combination of green space, flora, and exercise area. With a one-mile running loop, large wildflower patches, and rolling grassy areas, the IPU is a valuable asset to a previously park deficient community.

Vision for Los Angeles State Historic Park
The State Parks Department sees the IPU as a useful "way to garner public support during the planning process and help us raise funds for the permanent development" said Sean Woods. The end-use park will cover more of the site's total acreage, and feature open space that is flexible enough to be used for recreational use, performance art, or other community events. "What's being proposed is a 12-14 acre open field that can be used for soccer games, or frisbee that could be turned into a 15,000 person concert venue on the weekends. So it's a fluid design that has an improvisational component to it" said Woods.

Building a consensus on the design of the end-use park is a strenuous process that seeks to please the community, funders, designers, and users while staying on-track with the budget and project time line. Luckily, going through a similar process during the interim-use projects has prepared the parties involved on what to expect. Thus far, the design process for the end-use park has been centered around community involvement, and aims to incorporate as many of the community's visions as possible. The world-renowned firm Hargreaves & Associates has been selected to design the park, and their team of designers has extensively relied on "the public record going back to the Not A Cornfield, the General Plan for the project, the interpretive vision documents, and the work of Farmlab" said Woods. Woods further explained how the firm is "going back to those documents, and trying to come up with an organic process that tries to respond to all those different things, and also tries to respond to the mission of our department." Due to the current economic climate, the design process is currently stalled in the schematic design stage. If the project had remained on schedule, development of the end-use park was scheduled for 2011.

Since IPUs are not common, and do not have a set precedent or framework, the Parks Department is under pressure to make Los Angeles State Historic Park a preeminent destination for Angelenos.

Therefore, the Parks Department has held upwards of 60 public meetings to gather ideas for the end use park, and has allowed community members to become directly involved in the project by joining subcommittees (such as the Cultural Historical Committee) that take on the responsibility of fleshing out ideas and concepts and reporting them back to the designers. "Since we were spearheading this strategic initiative - we had to be successful. Failure was not an option for us. So the public has been very instrumental in driving the design" said Woods. Collaborating with the surrounding community during the Not A Cornfield interim use, and the IPU projects has helped familiarize the public with the park planning process. Interim-uses have effectively primed the site for it's community driven end-use as a world class state park.

Lessons Learned:

• Don't Hesitate, Activate: The benefit of invigorating the an unused brownfield cannot be quantified, per se, however there is clearly an intrinsic value to converting abandoned, hazardous land into green, public park space. Woods admits that if it weren't for the Not A Cornfield project, and the IPU, the State Parks Department would have simply put a fence around the property until it was ready to be developed for end-use. "When you think of the point of acquisition (2001) until now, the public has been able to use and enjoy the site. You took a neighborhood with practically no park land and now you've provided them with 13 acres of open space where they can come and recreate" said Woods. Site activation is the most fundamental benefit to interim use projects on brownfields, and Not A Cornfield and Los Angeles Historic State Park achieved that purpose.
• Extra Listening Goes A Long Way: High levels of public involvement and consensus building efforts have made these interim use projects accurately reflect the community's vision. Lauren Bon's effort to reach out to the local community by extensively documenting the area's history, and hiring community members onto her staff, connected the project directly to the community. The State Parks Department has made an equally impressive effort to accurately understand the needs and wants of the community. "Usually when you make a General Plan you have two or three public meetings, but for this park we had 60 public meetings - we had translators doing Chinese translation and Spanish translation. We provided day care, we really felt that since we were an unknown entity in this neighborhood that we had to go above and beyond what we would do traditionally" said Woods. State Parks has gone the extra mile to make sure the end-use park is a direct reflection of the community's voice.
• Community Leaders Are Needed For Community Projects: Both interim use projects on the site have actively engaged the local community in leadership development. Not A Cornfield (Farmlab) hired community members onto their staff in order to protect the project from straying from its local roots. And the State Parks Department has directly incorporated the community into the end-use park's design process by delegating power to them as subcommittees of the General Plan team. "What we've done is to take people from the community who are experts in certain fields and broken them into subcommittees - like the Cultural Historical subcommittee, and people to come up with different components to help us flesh those components out" explained Woods. This ground-up approach to park building ensures that the park is not only for the community, but by the community, and provides the community with a set of local leaders who have the training and experience to fight for the community's needs in the future.
• Get By With A Little Help From Your Friends: The interim use projects have been made possible by a patchwork of City and State services, private and public funding, and community input. Before the Not A Cornfield project could begin, the City of Los Angeles provided environmental site assessments to locate hazardous contamination, and the State Parks Department provided funding for the soil removal, disposal and cleaning. Without these collective efforts, the interim use projects could have been delayed, or faced with increased costs that could hinder development. This active approach to consensus building has benefited the interim use by streamlining development, and providing the necessary resources to navigate through legislative barriers.

Whitney Hawke recently graduated from Occidental College with degrees in Politics and Urban & Environmental Policy. In the fall she will attend Lewis & Clark Law School . She is also the Co-Founder and Business Manager of Brave Recs, an independent record label located in her hometown of Portland , Ore. She can be contacted at whitney.hawke@gmail.com