Stepped-Up Work Vowed on Potrero Canyon Park

City officials have pledged to move quickly on finishing Potrero Canyon Park, a project begun almost a decade ago and hampered by lack of funds and landslides.

Kathleen Chan, project manager with the city Recreation and Parks Department, said contractors are working to complete a pathway from Pacific Coast Highway through the canyon to the Palisades Recreation Center at the top.

Within the next six months, 500,000 cubic yards of dirt will be used to buttress the hillside and mend the 1994 landslide that demolished the Sunspot Motel on the highway, Chan said.

Work in Potrero Canyon, about three-quarters of a mile north of Chautauqua Boulevard, began last month when $5 million in funds from Proposition K became available for the project.

“It should be 70% complete by this summer,” Chan said.

The remainder of the project includes buttressing the lower end of the canyon with 800,000 cubic yards of dirt and landscaping the park and its baseball diamonds. All phases should be complete by 2000.