{"id":459795,"date":"2026-09-10T21:40:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T21:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459795\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T21:40:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T21:40:36","slug":"macarthur-park-fence-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459795\/","title":{"rendered":"MacArthur Park fence"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story<\/a> first appeared on The LA Local<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Robbie Hall has a record of the people she has treated for overdoses at MacArthur Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The photos of many of the people she has treated are saved on her phone. She can scroll through them and remember each one.<\/p>\n

Hall, an ambassador with the nonprofit Five Keys, has been doing this work for about four years and is at the park almost every day, carrying Naloxone, a medication used to reverse opioid overdoses.<\/p>\n

She typically responds when someone stops breathing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stopped counting when I got up in my 40s, because it started being gradually three of them, four of them,\u201d Hall said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On a recent September morning at the park, Hall said she found a 14-year-old girl in a bathroom who was experiencing an overdose. Tears welled up as she talked about the people she encounters at the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need help, they need help,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is every day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She believes the city needs to address the problem. When asked about the plans to fence the park<\/a>, she said she sees the fence as one way to improve the conditions she sees on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need to put something up here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For Hall and others who work around the park, the fence is less a solution than a stopgap, something concrete to try amid problems that have proven harder to solve.<\/p>\n

The Department of Recreation and Parks says the fence will be temporary and is still on track for construction this fall, but has not provided a specific date, cost estimate or explained what conditions would need to change before the fence comes down.<\/p>\n

Marco Pacheco, president of the MacArthur Park Park Advisory Board, does not believe the fence will be temporary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is going to be permanent,\u201d Pacheco said. \u201cThis is going to be a permanent fixture of some sort because first of all, you don\u2019t put up a fence that costs millions of dollars to take it down. It doesn\u2019t make any sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pacheco isn\u2019t the only one who has doubts.<\/p>\n

Richard Barron, who served on the Cultural Heritage Commission for 22 years before departing in July<\/a>, also questioned whether the city would follow through on its promise to remove the fence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI doubt that the fence is going to come down,\u201d Barron said, \u201cespecially when they\u2019ve spent all that money. Even taking it down costs a lot of money, you know, and you\u2019re going to throw all that material away?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved $2.3 million in funding for the project. The city has not said how much money will ultimately be spent on the fence.<\/p>\n

Everyone has a different idea of what the fence will do<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s consultants have described a fence that would be transparent, reversible and designed to blend into the park.<\/p>\n

Leila Hamroun, a senior preservation architect with Tetra Tech, the consulting firm working with the city on the project\u2019s design, said the fence won\u2019t be a dominant feature.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole intent here is to guarantee that it just blends in, that it\u2019s seamless,\u201d Hamroun said. \u201cIt\u2019s reversible, transparent, minimalist, consistent with the evolution of urban parks over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A rendering shows the proposed green metal fence around MacArthur Park.<\/p>\n

(<\/p>\n

Courtesy L.A. Recreation and Parks<\/p>\n

)<\/p>\n

The fence is expected to be about 8 feet tall, with gates at eight existing entrances. Decorative elements would be considered separately, with community input expected next year.<\/p>\n

For Michelle Garcia, who has been a vendor around MacArthur Park since 2015, it could help distinguish vendors from the people living in the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cI support it if they could get the homeless people out,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cThey are the ones that make MacArthur Park look bad. But they also make us look bad, because we sell around the area, so they think we\u2019re like them, which we\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia was among a group of vendors at MacArthur Park who held a Sept. 2 press conference to call attention to what they described as police harassment and citations that pushed vendors away from the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike us, we\u2019re trying to work and get money for our bills, our rent,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Police have their own expectations for what a fenced park could accomplish.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Police Department has stepped up enforcement around the park through a joint task force with the Drug Enforcement Administration focused on drug dealing in the area. In July, Rampart Division Capt. Benedict Fernandes said the operation had significantly disrupted the drug trade, but that drug users were spreading into surrounding neighborhoods in search of narcotics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that all the communities around have been impacted because it got spread this way, sort of like a shotgun blast,\u201d he said. \u201cIt went south, it went east, it went north, it went west.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fernandes said the next phase of the enforcement effort would focus on connecting unhoused people and drug users<\/a> with shelter and recovery services<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The fence, he said, is meant to make the park less convenient for drug activity and \u201cprevent crime\u201d inside the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause that\u2019s the problem,\u201d Fernandes said. \u201cThe Alvarado corridor at MacArthur Park has been convenient for drug users for years. We\u2019re just trying to make those things stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fernandes said the temporary fence along Alvarado and now the orange bollards installed in the area, have worked to disrupt that activity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Hall, the outreach worker administering Narcan at the park, has not seen those types of improvements on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince they did that big bust? No, it got worse,\u201d Hall said when asked whether she had seen fewer overdoses in the area.<\/p>\n

She said people wait for police to leave the park before returning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for Five Keys, there would be a lot more dead bodies here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Some residents say that adding a fence around MacArthur Park would change the makeup of the neighborhood. Others welcome a change to the troubled park.<\/p>\n

(<\/p>\n

Gary Coronado<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

The LA Local<\/p>\n

)<\/p>\n

How the fence is supposed to work<\/p>\n

The plan calls for the park to remain open during the day, with eight entry points, and close overnight from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. LAPD would close the gates at night, and Recreation and Parks maintenance workers would reopen them each morning.<\/p>\n

The department says the fence is intended to make the park easier to maintain. Illegal dumping, littering, vandalism and graffiti have made routine maintenance difficult, according to the department, which has said MacArthur Park generates more graffiti cleanup requests than nearby Lafayette Park.<\/p>\n

The city has pointed to nearby Lafayette Park, which is fenced and closed at night, as a model for MacArthur Park.<\/p>\n

Pacheco, the president of the park\u2019s advisory board, said he has heard general support for the fence among community members.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many cases, community members alluded to Lafayette Park having been fenced for a long time, the difference between the two parks, Lafayette being a lot safer and a lot cleaner and less of a problem than MacArthur Park,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fence still needs final approval from the five-person commission that approved the project\u2019s conceptual phase in October. The commission has not yet set a date to consider the final plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story first appeared on The LA Local. Robbie Hall has a record of the people she has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-459795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}