The Port of Los Angeles recently opened a waterfront promenade on its property, giving the nearby community unprecedented access to the water and sweeping views of the port’s activities.
The $77 million Wilmington Waterfront Promenade is the second phase of connecting the Wilmington community, located adjacent to the port, to the waterfront. The 9-acre promenade opened in February after more than three years of construction. Until this project, which port officials have deemed “transformational for the Wilmington community,” the industrial space wasn’t accessible to the public.
The port in 2011 opened a 30-acre park, previously a brownfield site, providing a buffer between the port and neighborhood. The next phase of the project includes constructing a pedestrian bridge and developing 12 acres of green space at the nation’s busiest container port. The port in February processed more than 780,000 containers, a 60% increase over last year.
The project’s goal was to maximize the views of the water “to embrace that it is a working port,” Dina Aryan-Zahlan, the port’s deputy executive director of development, told FreightWaves.
The promenade, hailed by port officials “as the window to the waterfront” of the working port, includes amenities such as picnic space, a floating dock and green space. Previously, the land contained empty buildings and a parking lot, Aryan-Zahlan said.
Wilmington, home to some 33,000 residents, is a majority Hispanic community and contains the third-largest oil field in the contiguous United States.
“The idea was to open that whole space up for the community to have access to what is our waterfront,” said port Community Relations Director Cecilia Moreno. “I think we’re the only community that doesn’t have a beach that’s right up against the water.”
Moreno, a Wilmington native, previously served as the Wilmington community affairs advocate for the port. She said she was mesmerized during her tour of the promenade.
“We just froze,” she said, adding that since the grand opening in February, many visitors have had the same awestruck and joyous reaction.
Philip Dugdale, who has worked on the project since 2016 and is the co-director of Sasaki’s New York design firm, said architects wanted to provide spaces for the community to engage with the water, with the human experience forefront in design choices. In contrast to the industrial aspects of the port, he said designers created a lush, green space.
“It’s reconnecting the community with the water,” he said.