Play Dates: Not Just for the Suburbs

What a great blog. I'm 8 months pregnant and about to move downtown. I completely agree with you and hope we can find a way to make downtown more kid friendly so we can stay for a long time!

With all the changes going on Downtown it is great to see that someone is bringing up this issue now. I appreciate the positive tone of your blog. Much better than waiting until your children are grown and then complaining about how you had to move out of the city because it wasn't kid friendly. Good job!!

Ok City Officials, what's next on the drawing board?

Great piece ... It's something my wife and I have talked about since moving to downtown - how the area is building at a rapid pace but not taking into account the demographics of people moving into the area. There are already plenty of people with kids, and more on the way yet there isn't many places to take them for the day, or even a few hours here in the core.

I hope the city and BIDs jump on this quickly and not think 5-10 years out.

In response to the article on Play Date, it's time we look into the needs of the children who are now residents of Downtown LA. There should be more amenities for them especially parks where they can not only get the exercise but also meet new friends. LA has always been park poor and having parks in the urban setting would definitely provide the recreation for the future of our City.

This blog article was great. I would definitely like to see a lot more articles from you, Susana. Keep up the good work. You're such a great advocate for this very important issue! If we ever want Downtown L.A. to be in a position where we can seriously compare it with downtown centers in San Francisco, Chicago and New York, this child services issue is something we need to address now. Getting a conversation started about the problem is a good start.

Great article, Susana! I'm looking forward to hearing more from you.

Thanks for adding a children's segment to blogdowntown. My son is 6 and my personal experience is that there are a ton of things to do downtown within walking, short bus or a scooter push. For his age, it's been amazing, BUT we have had a terrible time finding any kids his age. I hope your segment will also note fun kid events - especially for downtown locals - it's really the best place to meet other residents! Welcome to Blogdowntown!

Land for parks is not cheap, so new parks don't get built, and even if you can buy the land, you have to build a park and irrigation systems on whatever is there right now, whether a building that needs to be demolished, or a parking lot - also expensive.

Nothing except existing parks is zoned for "open space" downtown, which means the city (or private parties -- this is possible for private citizens to form park foundations and raise money by the way!) would have to buy expensive commercial zoned property and make it into a park.

Governmental agencies can't just down zone a commercial property to open space unless they already own the land -- that's illegal and removes the value from someone's private property because once it's zoned open space it is no longer developable. You have to buy the lot for whatever the value is of a developable lot, rezone it, and then build a park. All the Quimby fees downtown would get maybe one decent park built.

Pershing Square used to be a wonderful inner-city urban park. Maybe they can just undo everything they did to it in the last couple of decades and give us back an actual park, with grass and stuff. The ice skating is nice though. A lot of kids have been ice skating there this year.

Pershing Square has kids shows every Saturday at 1 & 3pm during the ice rink. They also have kids shows with bouncers sometimes during the summer. If the community wants more children's activities at the park they need to tell the Park Advisory. I think these are the people who put on the events at Pershing Park. Pershing Square has a web site for event information.

Pershing Square does have a website but their events are poor on kid-friendly events at convenient times. A lot of the events occur during the week (including at the Central Library)during lunch time or 2pm. Most of us living in downtown work full-time and can't make it during the work day. I've been wanting to go to the story time events at the library but I can't get off at work in the middle of the day to take my children. I will definitely contact the Children's Librarian at the Central Library (she's great) and inquire about offering more Saturday kid events.

Great article: I'm starting to notice more children downtown, and that's great to see.