Park and Recreation Facilities Get a Facelift to Ensure Residents
of the Best Facilities
in the SGV

In recognition of the City of Alhambra’s “Strategic Plan” goal to “manage and enhance leisure activities and facilities,” the Community Services Department is working long and hard to ensure that Alhambra residents have the best resources, and the most creative programming, in support of the reality that Alhambra is a great place to live, work, shop, eat, AND play. Here are some of the recent facilities improvements:   To ensure that Almansor Park remains the premiere recreational facility in the San Gabriel Valley:

Top Photo: Almansor Lake, located on the Almansor Golf Course, is undergoing major renovations.   Lower Photo: The walking/jogging trail around Almansor Park is receiving a new sponge-like surface. Left Photo: The new Picnic Pavilion, located on the shore of Lake Almansor.

• The Almansor Park Gymnasium recently received an external upgrade – a new paint job to protect and preserve one of our most precious recreational facilities.  And the continuing installation of new landscaping around the gym will add to its attractiveness.
   
• The highly popular walking/jogging trail around the park is receiving a brand new sponge-like surface, helping our walkers/runners, including many seniors, keep their joints moving smoothly.
   
• A brand new picnic pavilion, on the shore of Lake Almansor, has been newly reconstructed.
   
• Almansor Lake itself – actually two lakes connected by a scenic waterfall – is also undergoing major renovations, and will continue to be visually pleasing to picnickers and a  safe environment for our vast visiting avian population.

To ensure that Alhambra Golf Course remains the premiere course of its kind:

• Several of the tee boxes have been renovated and extended (most notably the #3 tee box, both extended and realigned), adding more total yardage to the course, and, thereby, more of a challenge to our dedicated players.
   
• Major 2008 improvements to the Golf Course will include additional tee box renovations/expansions, concrete repairs, cart path extensions, and major improvements to the Pro Shop restroom (that also serves customers at Birdies).

Children will enjoy the stylized tropical tree (that rains water, not coconuts), and a collection of colorful buckets that, when filled to the proper level, rains down cooling water.

To that ensure youngsters at the Alhambra Park Pool have the most enjoyable recreational experience possible: A new water play area (adjacent to the pool, on the site of the passé wading pool) has just been completed.  Children are already staring in anticipation at the unusual structures erected on the site – a stylized tropical tree (that rains water, not coconuts), and a collection of colorful buckets that, when filled to the proper level, rains down cooling water.

And as the children frolic under the cooling structures, an additional water feature sprays water up, from the ground, to complete the cooling process. This “bound-to-be-popular” area will officially open in the summer of 2008, but rumor has it that there may be a surprise opening, before summertime, when the weather turns unseasonably warm, maybe around Easter time.

To ensure Alhambra of the best parks and recreation facilities around, other projects include:

• Painting the exteriors of several park buildings were recently painted, including the Emery Park Youth Center; completing the design and the construction of the Veteran’s Memorial at Alhambra Park; installation of a new roof at the Alhambra Historical Society Museum located in Burke Heritage Park.