Rose Park Neighborhood Association

Look­ing to make a dif­fer­ence? Every year RPNA elects its board. We do it in June. Want to step up? Yes you need to par­tic­i­pate in monthly meet­ings; take lead­er­ship and gen­er­ally do right by the orga­ni­za­tion and its mis­sion. Send in to info@rpna.org and we’ll give you the scoop.

And here is our mis­sion statement…

The mis­sion of the RPNA is to edu­cate the res­i­dents, prop­erty and busi­ness own­ers within the RPNA bound­aries, as well as city and neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ties about the Rose Park neigh­bor­hood. The pur­pose shall be to teach and dis­sem­i­nate edu­ca­tion mate­ri­als to the pub­lic, includ­ing, but not lim­ited to, mate­r­ial relat­ing to Rose Park and Rose Park South His­toric Dis­tricts, his­toric and archi­tec­tural preser­va­tion, zon­ing laws; crime sta­tis­tics and com­mu­nity improve­ment, through pub­li­ca­tions, lec­tures, or oth­er­wise. In so doing, RPNA will  improve the qual­ity of life in the Rose Park Neigh­bor­hood Asso­ci­a­tion area.

EAST 7TH ST. GETS PLANTED: COUNCILWOMAN LOWENTHAL HELPS PLANT NEARLY 100 TREES ON BOULEVARD

 Sat­ur­day April 27th 8am-11am Meet at Daw­son and 7th St., Long Beach, CA

Long Beach, CA (April 25, 2013)— East 7th St. from Alami­tos to Redondo is being planted. The city started this past Mon­day plant­ing 70 trees from Alami­tos to Junipero; in exist­ing as well as new tree wells. This com­ing Sat­ur­day the com­mu­ni­ties along East 7th St: Rose Park, Crafts­man Vil­lage and North Alami­tos Beach will help plant the remain­ing trees.

To make an effect, the group deci­sion, with input from the city’s arborist, was to plant a sin­gle tree species –Tabebuia impetig­i­nosa – also known as pink ipe or pur­ple trum­pet. Hun­dreds of trees were con­sid­ered, but this tree was thought to pro­duce most of the desired ben­e­fits of green­ing the street: hardy for the con­di­tions, have mod­est sea­sonal change, and have a pretty tree struc­ture. In just a cou­ple of years, dri­ving down East 7th St. will be sub­stan­tially altered due to this one project.   The East 7th St. Col­lab­o­ra­tion is made up of the adjoin­ing neigh­bor­hoods, 7th St retail­ers & prop­erty own­ers, as well as self employed who work along East 7th St.  The group asked Coun­cil­woman Lowen­thal to con­sider a major tree plant­ing to improve the cohe­sive­ness along the boule­vard and she read­ily agreed. The E7 group meets monthly to make a dif­fer­ence in the look and func­tion of East 7th St.

The actions of the group con­tinue a long legacy of com­mu­nity based street improve­ment efforts. One of the first actions of the Rose Park Asso­ci­a­tion in the early 1900’s was to get the street paved. Since 2010, the infor­mal E7 group has achieved inter­sec­tion pavers from Alami­tos to Junipero; which this tree plant­ing is part of. In addi­tion, it has also worked with the city’s plan­ning depart­ment and the owner of the Big Saver gro­cery chain to achieve a neigh­bor­hood appro­pri­ate design for its upcom­ing remodel at Junipero and East 7th St.

More work is needed to improve the street. Busi­ness and prop­erty own­ers along East 7th St, as well as own­ers of home based busi­nesses adja­cent to East 7th St. are encour­aged to get involved and may con­tact Gretchen Swan­son at connect2RosePark@gmail.com. Bet­ter yet, come out to the tree plant­ing this Sat­ur­day 8am at Daw­son and East 7th St and meet your neigh­bors while plant­ing a tree.

Spon­sors include: Suja Lowen­thal, Coun­cil­woman 2nd Dis­trict, East 7th St. Col­lab­o­ra­tion, Rose Park Neigh­bor­hood Asso­ci­a­tion, Crafts­man Vil­lage His­toric Dis­trict, North Alami­tos Beach Neigh­bor­hood Assn.