Pacoima Beautiful, City of San Fernando Unveil Pacoima Wash Greenway
Amidst an intense heat wave, officials from the City of San Fernando and the nonprofit Pacoima Beautiful held the grand opening of the Pacoima Wash Greenway, meant to transform the corridor into something greener and more climate-resilient for the community.
Located right next to Cindy Montañez Natural Park, the greenway comes with new landscaping, shrubs, trees, and bioswale improvements to the bike path that connects to the Pacoima Wash Pedestrian Bridge.
The project was funded through a $3.5 million grant awarded to Pacoima Beautiful by the Bezos Earth Fund in 2023.
Veronica Padilla-Campos, executive director of Pacoima Beautiful, said the project began 17 years ago in a vision plan, and at first, it was hard to get the community interested in it. But after years of work, they have transformed what she described as an underused concrete channel into a “vibrant community space” where people can safely connect with nature.
“This project represents what happens when community members lead with love for their neighborhood,” Padilla-Campos said. “It means safer connections to parks, to schools and homes. It means more shade, more beauty and more places for our bodies to move and more opportunities for our children to grow up, seeing that they deserve clean, green, welcoming spaces right here in the Northeast Valley.
“This is part of our vision to see the tree canopy increase, to see our youth contributing to the maintenance … and be able to also support the groundwater and then help clean our air,” she added. “It’s all connected. These green spaces mean so much to the overall environment of our community.”
Associated Program: Pacoima Wash