Because of the incredible advocacy of many, many Great Park supporters, our City Council early Wednesday morning voted 6-1 in favor of moving forward with conceptual design for an LC-compliant Great Park! Only Councilmember Zwick did not support an LC-compliant Great Park.
Your written comments and Letters of Interest accounted for a majority of the 1,017 pages of written public comment received by Council (163mb PDF).
Over 200 people attended the Great Park Coalition rally in front of City Hall on Tuesday! And well over 100 Great Park supporters attended the Council Meeting afterwards, with many providing public testimony on the need for and future benefits of the Great Park.
Staff will return to Council in the Fall with an update on an LC-compliant park design and further cost analysis. Here’s the Santa Monica Mirror’s account of the meeting.
There are so many people and organizations to thank for this hard-won, milestone victory yesterday. A very heartfelt thank you to each of you who contributed. We know we’ll miss folks if we try to enumerate every contributor, but a few major shout-outs go to…
- Jerry Rubin and Michael Cladis for the rally sound system
- Our rally Master of Ceremonies, Robb Brown
- Rally speakers Carlos Prieto of Greenpeace, A2P’s Cathy Larson, Former Mayors Pam O’Connor, Mike Feinstein, & Phil Brock, and current City Councilmembers Dan Hall & Ellis Raskin
- Rally junior organizer Avery Katz
- Melinda Mehringer, Lisa Demsky, and Santa Monica AYSO
- Jose Palomares, Raul Palomares, and Autobahn Soccer Club
- Patti Braun and Santa Monica-Malibu PTA Council for rally promotion and the Great Park coloring table
- Matt Peterson and Team Santa Monica Aquatics
- Mike Denbeau, Maddie Denbeau, Destiny Reynoso, and Santa Monica Girls’ 12U Fastpitch Softball team
- Gavin Scott, Nicola Scott, & the GPC videography and songs team
- Cynthia Rose for the t-shirts table
- Sylvie Rokab for rally signs
- Susan Jain & Michael Brodsky for rally signs, banners, and promotion
- ALL of our GPC council meeting speakers, particularly the incredible youth speakers who included James Faries, Neelah Bell, David Johnson, Jaxton Demsky, Kate Mehringer, Sophie Litak, Emily Litak, Maddie Denbeau, Destiny Reynoso, Alfonso Maron, and Samuel Bernardo
- Friends and family who showed up and spoke up
- And of course City Council for voting in favor of an LC-compliant Great Park!
The after-midnight crew…
Thank you all for taking action — we are so grateful for and proud of every member of this Coalition! We’ll circle back once we learn more about what’s next for the LC-compliant park concept design and community engagement this Fall.
