By Eliza PARTIKA

The City of Glendale Parks and Recreation Committee seeks community input as it updates the City’s Open Space and Conservation and Recreation (OSCR) Element [the Plan]. 

The OSCR contains plans and procedures for conservation and the use of Glendale’s parks, open space and recreation. The City’s updates to the Plan, last comprehensively updated in 1993, will aim to “capture a common vision for an inclusive future for the City’s parks and recreation system and open spaces, and to establish goals and priorities for Open Space and Conservation for the coming decades,” according to the City’s webpage about the element. The City’s Recreation Element of the Plan, last comprehensively updated in 1996, will be revitalized to “address the community’s evolving need for parks, recreational facilities, and programming.”

The project receives its funding from earmarked city funds and Los Angeles Measure A funds for parks implementation. 

A Dec. 1 virtual community meeting introduced the project and included interactive boards and activities designed to gather community concerns. With enough community input, the City hopes to get a sense of what park and recreation programs are working well, how it can conserve its natural resources and what new ideas and improvements community members would like to see in the future. 

According to Jessica Henson, partner-in-charge of landscape architecture firm Olin Los Angeles Studio, and the OSCR project manager, previous updates to the plan only considered the total acreage of Glendale’s parks, not the type of open space or what it is being used for. The city currently has 286 acres of developed parks and over 5,000 acres of open space, mostly in the Verdugo Mountains. While there is green space throughout the city, these parks are concentrated in the north part of Glendale. This element seeks to add more green space throughout the city, Henson said. 

“Some more modern methods are not only looking at the total acreages, but they’re looking at the distance of any given resident to a particular park. And so that’s something that in this update, we believe we’ll be looking at not just the total acres of parks, but how many residents live, for example, within a 10-minute walk of a park, and how many residents are trying to use the same facilities,” Henson said. 

Henson will also work with the local fire department and the Parks Commission to ensure green space is safe and fire protected and takes into account the tree canopy coverage that already exists in Glendale, potentially adding to areas that have fewer trees or other greenery. Glendale’s fire risk is higher than 98% of surrounding communities, according to a 2023 LA County Fire report on High Severity Zones. 

The project will need several assessments across City departments, in addition to community outreach, before final iterations of the plan are considered. This includes a Community Profile (technical synopsis), a Parks Needs Assessment and Inventory, a Recreation Program and Services Assessment, and an Open Space and Conservation Assessment. 

The City began gathering information in August 2025 and will continue collecting initial community feedback and information until January 2026. From January 2026 through June 2026, the City will be drafting early ideas and draft elements based on its research and analysis and presenting them to Glendale City Council, the Parks, Recreation and Community Services Commission

[“PRCS”] Commission, and City departments. The draft OSCR elements will be revisited in summer 2026 with community input, and fall 2026 – early 2027 will see the final element drafted.

Olin and its partners have been contracted by the City to lead the entire element update. The Community Services and Parks Dept. is responsible for leading the OSCR Elements update, with Community Development Dept.’s long-range planning providing technical support. The PRCS Commission, as an advisory body, will receive regular updates (anticipating up to four updates throughout the process) for commission and public feedback, in addition to presenting at least once to the Planning Commission and Sustainability Commission. The final report will be taken to the city council for its final approval in 2027.

Henson said they are also considering indigenous consultants for this project, and encourages indigenous groups wishing to participate to reach out. 

“There are indigenous consultations that are part of this scope of work, and we are certainly enthusiastic to understand priorities from indigenous groups, especially [because] we have so many groups that have stewarded this land for millennia and are really foundational to our natural systems and open spaces,” she said. 

For now, Henson said the best way to get involved is to come to a community meeting or outreach event. Two community meetings were held so far in the project with four additional community meetings anticipated through 2027. 

Another way to participate is by taking the OSCR survey at https://glendaleoscr.com/

“No need to wait,” said Henson. “The sooner we can have ideas from folks, the sooner we can start thinking about how those updates get made.”

A city email has been set up that the public can contact: oscr@glendaleca.gov.  The City’s project manager for the OSCR Elements update is Joseph Gonzalez, CSP Park Planner. Project updates can be found at: https://www.glendaleca.gov/OSCR.