Ord and Yale Street Park

From vacant and blighted to vibrant and bustling—this is the renovated Alpine Recreation Center in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.

The site has a steep elevation change of over 100 feet from the entry to the top. But this constraint became an asset and a source of inspiration for the park’s design—creating a series of terraces that promote community health and wellness, with consideration for the neighborhood’s diverse demographics and multigenerational families.

The Park has three main community spaces anchored by three custom-designed landscape architectural elements. The Lotus Plaza stimulates the mind as a place for community gathering and performance and its Moon Gate is a welcoming entry portal. The Bamboo Garden Room encourages exercise with a children’s play area, picnic area, game tables and fitness equipment shaded by the Bamboo Forest Shade Canopy. The garden mimics a Chinese rock garden with drought-tolerant California adaptive plants that create texture, color and movement. Trees that are native to Asia and culturally important in Chinese culture, such as Saucer Magnolia, Pine trees, and Chinese Flame trees, are integrated with California native and adaptive plants, representative of the Asian American experience.

At the top of the park, the spirit is rejuvenated in the Heavenly Garden, with expansive views of the surrounding neighborhood and mountains. An illuminated, 20-foot Lantern Tower serves as a community beacon.

A continuous graphic stairway connects residents from the hillside community to the business district of Chinatown. This 147-step stairway is an important community linkage, featuring motivational messages that encourage users to keep moving upwards to a healthier lifestyle. The hillside and stairway are lined with California Native Coastal Sage Scrub to stabilize the slope, reduce stormwater runoff, and provide habitat and a food source for urban pollinators and wildlife. The park’s landscape is irrigated through a stormwater capture and re-use system that collects runoff in a cistern under the park’s community plaza.