LA receives $10.1 million from Bezos Earth Fund for Watts Towers park

LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- Los Angeles will receive a $10.1 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund for development of a five-acre park and arts and culture campus at the site of the Watts Towers, the organization announced Monday.

The grant from the organization led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren announced grants to eight cities, with the awards totaling $100 million, as part of its Greening America's Cities campaign.

"Growing up in Albuquerque I remember in middle school taking the city bus to my grandma's house after school," Lauren Sánchez Bezos, vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund, said in a statement.

"Right by her house there was a park. I loved that park so much. I went there all the time. It felt enormous to me as a kid but I'm sure if I went back now it would look a lot smaller. I felt safe there. Protected. I would go by myself and just play for hours.

"That's what a great park does. It makes the world feel bigger and the world feel safer. That's what we're trying to give people with this program. Not just green space. A place that feels like yours."

According to the fund, the Watts Towers park project will include shade trees, native and drought-tolerant plants, a walking path, an outdoor amphitheater classroom and interactive art installations.

"As the only official tourist site and major cultural destination in Watts, the revitalized campus will expand access to arts and museum education programming and welcoming green space for more than 50,000 annual visitors, supporting a vibrant community hub in advance of the 2028 Olympics under city stewardship," according to the fund.

The award is the second Los Angeles has received through the Fund's Greening America's Cities program. In 2023, when the program began, the city received $10.1 million, which was used to fund a community garden in East Los Angeles, an improvement project at Juntos Family Park near Atwater, and the planting of more than 6,200 trees in South Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.

With the $100 million announced Monday, the Greening America's Cities program has now distributed a total of $150 million to 11 cities, with plans to ultimately award a total of $400 million across the country.

"At the Bezos Earth Fund, we want to make the planet a place people can and want to live, and that includes making sure people have green spaces woven into daily life -- places to cool down and get shade, bring their families, or simply walk through on their commute. Those places shouldn't be a luxury," Tom Taylor, CEO and president of the Bezos Earth Fund, said in a statement.