Topping off Echo Park Lake

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L.A.’s Echo Park neighborhood is soon to get its namesake back.

The community's 29-acre acre park just northwest of Dodger Stadium has been closed for two years, but it's coming back--new and improved.

Echo Park Lake and the green space around it have been a draw to the densely-populated Echo Park neighborhood for more than a century. But for the past two years, it’s been more of a fenced-off eyesore, as the city has worked to revamp the lake.

The lake is a detention basin for the city’s storm drain system, collecting runoff from the streets. In 2006, The CA Regional Water Quality Control Board, the water quality regulating agency for water bodies in Los Angeles, identified Echo Park Lake an impaired water body due to contamination pollution. To meet water quality standards, the city has spent the past two years draining, dredging and relining the lake, as well as adding a filtration system to keep out pollutants.

Instead of picnics and paddleboats, echo park residents have dealt with construction sounds and strange smells.

“It’s just been unfortunate not to have a place to go and sit and read a book or jog around the lake,” said Adam Ridley, who lives near the park. “And the construction can be a little noisy.”

Jose Sigala, former president of the greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council says all the waiting will soon be worth it.

“When I talk to my fellow neighbors, I tell them, it’s going to be an convenience for about a year and a half,” said Sigala. “But look at it this way, the rehabilitation of the lake should last another 100 years.”

The $64.7 million rehabilitation project is funded by Proposition 0—the $500 million Clean Water Bond measure that funds 32 different storm water construction projects around the city.

The park’s famous lotus beds, which inspire an annual lotus festival, died a few years back. They were replanted this week and expected to bloom next spring. And the park’s famous art-deco “Nuestra Reina de Los Angeles” or Lady of the Lake statue—once vandalized and moved to a different part of the park—is back in its old spot on the lake’s northern peninsula.

There will also be a new playground, walking trails, a boathouse café and fishing.

"I can’t wait, it’s been years in the making,” said Gabriel Sandoval, whose home overlooks the park. “I look forward to the opening of this park and ensuring that it becomes a city center, like many other great city centers in L.A.”