Silver Lake Master Plan Must Seize Opportunities For Accessible Public Space
For the first time since William Mulholland brought water to the Silver Lake and Ivanhoe Reservoirs in 1906, the City of Los Angeles has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform these spaces into a new public resource. It begins today, Thursday, June 27, when the City’s Department of Water and Power and Bureau of Engineering hold the first of six “master planning” meetings to envision a new future for the now-defunct, 127-acre Silver Lake Reservoirs Complex that currently lies locked behind ten-foot rusted barbed wire fences…
What do we do with the Silver Lake reservoirs?
The Silver Lake reservoir is empty. For months now, day after day, construction trucks drive up and down temporary ramps onto the floor of the lake. Neighbors are weary of construction on the surrounding streets, and of looking out at blank concrete walls surrounding a huge, dry pit. Walkers and runners peer through the rusty chain link fences and wonder what’s happening next…
What Can the Dry Silver Lake Reservoir Teach Us About the Future Ecology of Los Angeles?
A couple months ago a friend, and storyteller, who lives in an apartment overlooking the Silver Lake Reservoir gazed out his window and then quipped on social media: "It’s like the DMZ." As joggers ran circles around the lake, backhoes performed a mysterious choreography in the dry lake. The fence that separates pedestrians from what used to be drinking water never looked so ominous…
Here Is A Beautiful Proposal For The Future Of The Silver Lake Reservoir
The Silver Lake Reservoir was drained over the summer in order to build a new water pipeline underneath it (R.I.P. Shade Balls). Since then, the Reservoir (technically two reservoirs; the larger is the Silver Lake Reservoir, while a much smaller Ivanhoe Reservoir lies adjacent) was gradually emptied of its 400 million gallons of water, and is now the dismal site of a dry pit filled with construction trucks, surrounded by chain-link fences and janky concrete…
