Wrigley Greenbelt Construction
Atlas Green Works Principal Consultant Larry Smith was the Project & Construction Manager for the recently completed 1-mile-long Wrigley Greenbelt Project. The greenbelt runs along the eastern base of the Los Angeles River levee through a residential community along De Forest Ave. in Long Beach. The project facilities include a 1-mile pedestrian decomposed granite trail from 34th St. down to 26th St. where pedestrians will be able to connect to the existing Los Angeles River pedestrian and bicycle trail along the top of the east levee.
Other improvements include the planting of 15,000 1-gal. native plants, another 117 trees, pedestrian rest areas with picnic tables and other benches along the 1-mile trail, and equestrian rest areas.
Wrigley Greenbelt Project
The original construction budget was $1M and the original design process began over 10 years ago. However, as with many of these types of projects, the initial budget of $1M proposed for Los Angeles County Open Space District for Prop. A funding was based on a concept level schematic design in 2007. After the 2007 grant award, construction documents had been developed by Richard Fisher and Associates in 2013 with input from the community.
Unfortunately, again as with many of these types of projects, there were enumerable delays for a variety of reasons, the last one being that by the time the construction documents went out to bid the bids came in significantly over budget.
By Fall 2020, the City of Long Beach had reached out to the Conservation Corps of Long Beach (CCLB) to be a partner in the construction of the Greenbelt Project. At that juncture Atlas Green Works (AGW) was brought on by CCLB to be the Project Manager. Through a unique partnership between CCLB, the City of Long Beach, and several additional funding partners developed by the AGW-CCLB Team, we were able to raise an additional $3M to complete construction as per plan, and with some significant additions to the design.
The Greenbelt was opened to the public on March 20th.
The final construction budget is approximately $4M including all funding sources.