We can now add another beloved Los Angeles institution to the list of the disappeared. On Jan. 8, the Palisades-Malibu YMCA Temescal Canyon swimming pool was buried under tons of pea gravel, despite passionate community protest.
For half a century, the Palisades-Malibu Y had leased the pool from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for $1 a year. In return, the Y provided a unique outdoor aquatics center. It was funky, but we liked it that way. Anyone willing to brave cinder-block walls and open showers was rewarded by swimming in nature -- hawks, deer and gray fog over the canyon made workouts inspiring. Friendships went far beyond the lane lines. The joke was that you could find anything "at the pool," from pet sitters to recipes to rides to the doctor.
Lap swimmers, first-timers and former Olympians, youth teams, the disabled and the elderly, inner-city summer-camp kids and attendees at Sunday "Family Splash" barbecues all found physical challenge and emotional solace in the pool. Generations grew up around that vintage concrete deck.
Then, a year ago, the pipes gave out. The rest of the structure was determined to be "grossly stable" by environmental engineers, who said it would cost $400,000 to get the pool's 50-year-old arteries up and running again. The Y was committed to raising the money for the repairs and to maintaining the pool, which has been central to its membership. But the executive director of the conservancy, Joe Edmiston, decided Temescal Canyon shouldn't have a pool at all.
Edmiston is the Santa Monica Mountains czar whom Los Angeles magazine has characterized as "L.A.'s most powerful unelected official." "Unrivaled in his protection of open space," the magazine added, "he has antagonized both property rights advocates and environmentalists." In 1980, he founded the conservancy, a state agency, and he's been in charge ever since.
In a December memo that Edmiston wrote to the conservancy board and advisory committee, he trotted out a slew of legalities that added up to this absurdity: A pool whose mission and value had been clear for decades suddenly couldn't be justified without applying "appropriate planning procedures." Besides, he wrote, the space it occupied was needed for at-risk-youth programs.
