A great charity, the Trust for Public Land, along with the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, is holding a ribbon cutting in Watts this Saturday for a beautiful new pocket park. Laemmle Theatres President Greg Laemmle and L.A. City Councilman Joe Buscaino will be there too and the public is invited to join them in celebrating the official opening of this new green space for the people of Watts at 11300 Monitor Avenue. The event is from 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM, rain or shine. Entertainment and refreshments will be provided.

“For decades, 1.13 acres of land on Monitor Avenue in Watts lay vacant, overgrown with weeds and strewn with garbage and broken glass. When plans for a housing development fell through, the prospect of giving local children and their parents a safe, welcoming place to meet and play motivated neighbors to step forward and support the creation of a community park. Local residents actively participated in the park planning process. At a series of community workshops, they suggested special features and helped to refine and shape their initial input into a coherent concept for the entire park. Following their wishes, the finished design includes a large children’s playground, walking path, a Fitness Zone® outdoor gym for adults and teens, skate-friendly features, and a down-to-earth grassy lawn with picnic tables.

“The project is a partnership between The Trust for Public Land and the City of Los Angeles Recreation and Parks and is due to be completed in winter of 2015.”

The Trust for Public Land creates parks and protects land for people all over the United States, ensuring healthy, livable communities for generations to come. Please join the Laemmle Charitable Foundation in supporting this worthy cause. Every one dollar donated to the TPL conserves more than four dollars worth of land.

P.S., the Watts Towers, one of L.A’s treasures, is less than a mile away from the park, so if you haven’t seen them in a while consider a visit after the festivities at the park.

There are many amazing things about Southern California and one of them is the fact that we live in incredibly close proximity to serious megafauna like mountain lions, dolphins and bears. Even though Los Angeles and the surrounding communities constitute one of the world’s greatest megalopolises, creatures like cougars have managed to cope and survive. Freeways are a major problem however. For years wildlife activists and transportation officials have been lobbying for strategically located wildlife corridors to help animals safely cross the freeways that crisscross their habitat. Now the National Wildlife Federation is ramping up efforts to build the first such crossing, which are key to these magnificent animals’ survival. Click here to learn more, get involved and donate, and click here to see a brief but awesome video of a family of cougars filmed in the mountains above Glendora just last month.