Harborside Park wasn’t on the agenda at the Chula Vista City Council meeting late last month. But it was on residents’ minds.
As city leaders discussed potential sites for future public parks, several people took the podium to remind them that many were still waiting for updates on parks that already exist — including Harborside, which has been closed for more than a year.
“It’s not really fair for the east side to get all of these quality parks,” said Chula Vista resident John Acosta. “Do you forget about people on the west side?”
The ongoing closure of Harborside Park and city leaders’ controversial decision to explore leasing or selling the land for housing has drawn renewed attention to the unequal way that Chula Vista’s parks are distributed across the city.
The divide is between East Chula Vista — the newer, wealthier side of the city — and West Chula Vista — which is older and home to more working class neighborhoods.
East Chula Vista has almost three and a half times the amount of park space that the city’s west side has, according to a 2021 report by a now-dissolved city watchdog group called the Growth Management Oversight Commission.
That disparity has remained mostly unchanged in the last several years. But at least 100 more acres of land in East Chula Vista has been set aside for future parks.
City leaders say they are exploring some possible ways to bring new parks to the west side. Still, many residents say the city’s park divide is an ongoing source of frustration.
Chula Vista’s park divide is largely a result of the different eras during which parts of the city were built, according to the city Parks and Recreation Department.
The city began as a dense region to the west of the I-805 freeway. In those early decades, Chula Vista had no minimum requirements for park space, and the city’s approach to park development was “somewhat happenstance in nature.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, that changed. The city council began regulating parkland — first setting a goal of having 2 acres per every 1,000 residents, then later upping it to 3 acres.
Development of the westside had slowed by then. But the city was beginning to sprawl outward into the hills to the east, kickstarting construction of the Eastlake and Rancho del Rey neighborhoods. The new requirements encouraged developers to build parks more frequently on the new eastside.
In recent years, newer building codes have also required that developers help fund new parkland as part of their projects, which has led to even more parks in East Chula Vista.
When Harborside Park opened in Southwest Chula Vista in 2006, it was the first park to be built on the west side in over two decades.
Public parks are incredibly valuable to the people who live nearby, especially for families and young children. Studies have shown that parks encourage physical fitness, improve air quality and absorb heat. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended parks as a way to battle obesity.
“We see from lots of national data that people who live closer to parks are more likely to be healthier and be more physically active,” said San Diego State University professor Elva Arredondo, who studies health disparities. “There's a very strong link there.”
But many Americans do not have public parks in their neighborhoods — a loss that lower income residents and people of color experience disproportionately. That gap in access to parkland, Arredondo said, means many people are being deprived of an essential resource.
“I think it is a right,” she said. “We would probably see less or fewer disparities in a lot of health outcomes if we had opportunities to be active, if we had opportunities to connect with neighbors and decompress.”
West Chula Vista does have its share of beautiful parks. Resident Alondra Padilla said she and her two kids drive to visit Hilltop Park every day. Padilla’s son Mateo has autism, and she said he loves the smell of the towering eucalyptus trees, which help keep him calm.
“That's the reason we love to come in here,” Padilla said.
But Padilla also said she wanted to see the city build more parks on the west side. Because of Mateo’s autism, she said, they often need to move from park to park during the day. But there are only a handful of parks close to her apartment in Southwest Chula Vista, including the now fenced-off Harborside Park.
“We need more for the kids,” she said.
The loss of Harborside Park has not significantly changed the overall distribution of parkland — the park itself is just 5 acres — but it has reignited frustrations over the issue. Questions about future parks on the west side have resurfaced in city council discussions, local protests, and meetings of the Parks and Recreation Commission.
“There aren't very many areas where in the future you can have a future park,” said Parks and Recreation Commissioner Martin Calvo during a meeting earlier this year. “Once Harborside is gone, it's gone.”
“Just so everybody knows,” another commissioner added, “the Council made the decision to close the park without asking us our opinion.”
City leaders say the disparity in parkland won’t be easy to resolve. Still, they say they are exploring some different ways to add new parks on the westside.
At the Oct. 24 City Council meeting, Mayor John McCann said a new agreement with the Los Angeles construction company Landify ECT will allow Chula Vista to evaluate several potential sites for new parks.
City staff said the company could help the city cover the costs of building new parks through its unique workflow, which involves giving the soil to an excavation company for re-use and using the fees to fund the park itself.
The sites they will explore include one on the west side — the proposed Lower Sweetwater Community Park site, which would sit along I-805 just west of Sweetwater River Park.
“It seems like just a perfect place to put a park,” McCann said. “To be able to work with the neighbors and the community to make it happen, and do it in a way that is fiscally responsible for this city.”
Chula Vista Parks and Recreation has listed a total of 16 potential new parks west of I-805. City leaders have long aspired to build a continuous “Greenbelt” of parks and trails that would run all the way around the edge of the city.
Some residents have also been working to add more greenery to parts of the city themselves. In recent years, students and teachers at Chula Vista High School have brought rows of vegetables and several large fruit trees bursting to life between the portables on the north side of campus.
Arredondo said looking for new ways to add green space on the west side is a good approach.
“Looking for those opportunities where you can create more green space in an area that's been abandoned,” she said. “I think that that's going to help create a culture where people are going to be really advocating for more space in their areas.”
