When the Goodyear Blimp hovers over L.A.’s Exposition Park for a game at L.A. Memorial Coliseum or BMO Stadium, its aerial view reveals a jumble of cultural destinations too — the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California Science Center and the California African American Museum, among others — divided by oceans of asphalt and not much actual green space. In many ways, it’s a palimpsest of L.A. itself: a collection of lovely, impressive places fragmented in a car-centric landscape.
The Office of Exposition Park Management, the agency tasked by the state to oversee this wondrous, sprawling chaos, has sought to remedy the 160-acre park’s shortcomings for decades — with few results. Although virtually all of Expo’s institutions have been radically transformed and important new offerings such as the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center are emerging, the park space that stitches it all together has changed little. A 1993 master plan led to a few improvements, including Jesse Brewer Jr. Park and the Expo Center, a popular recreational facility, but it didn’t shift the overall dynamic. A subsequent plan sat in limbo.
But on Aug. 1, Expo Park took a major step forward with the approval of $351.5 million in state funding for six new acres of green space atop an underground parking garage that will replace sprawling asphalt surface lots along Expo’s southern edge. It’s just one component of a 2020 plan, crafted by the architecture and planning firm Torti Gallas + Partners, to provide a more unified, welcoming experience via increased green space, shade, public facilities and connections among the various attractions.
But the plan to move parking underground is by far the biggest swing for the fences on the part of Expo Park General Manager Andrea Ambriz, who since beginning her job in early 2023 has jump-started the project and the agency that oversees it.
“I like to aim high,” Ambriz said. “It’s not just about managing the parking lots. It’s about building out the entirety of the park to create one cohesive experience.”
Ambriz stresses the park’s singular role in the city, as a sports and culture destination, a local park and a soon-to-be centerpiece of the 2028 L.A. Olympics. “If we do it right, we’re going to put ourselves on the map for generations to come,” she said.
The design team for the $351.5-million garage project, which also will include new headquarters for Expo Park management and a community-welcome center, should be selected by the beginning of next year, Ambriz said, with work completed by late 2027, in time to work out kinks before the Olympics. Her quest to bite off the biggest piece of the master plan grew, foremost, out of the park’s long overdue need to better serve South L.A. It would be, she said, the largest investment in green infrastructure in the neighborhood’s history and provide a community space for what is one of the most park-poor areas of the city. “It’s about health and wellness, recreation, climate mitigation, infrastructure and jobs,” she said.
“The north side of Expo Park has the Rose Garden facing USC. But facing South L.A., the park is currently parking lots and gates,” said Zahirah Mann, president and chief executive of the South Los Angeles Transit Empowerment Zone (better known as SLATE-Z), a public-private partnership dedicated to creating equitable, sustainable change in the area. “To turn that into green space that the community can see and enjoy — that is going to be transformative.”
But the move is also strategic: a way of visibly building enthusiasm and setting the stage to raise more money beyond the state funding.
“I really knew that we would get a lot of momentum, a lot of support and attention, if we could say the government is footing the down payment for this,” Ambriz said while driving through the park in an electric cart, a cardboard poster board of the master plan stashed in the back seat.
Ambriz, 40, has the diverse credentials for this kind of effort. Her grandparents grew up near the park, and it’s been part of her life since childhood. Since receiving a master’s in public policy from UC Berkeley, she was a legislative aide in the California Assembly and Senate, deputy director of private sector engagement in the Obama White House, a presidential appointee in the Treasury Department, deputy director of external affairs at the California Natural Resources Agency, chief operating officer of River L.A. and chief of staff at Local 2015 of the Service Employees International Union.
When she took over as Expo Park GM, the Olympic countdown had started but the office had not had a permanent general manager since March 2021, when Anna Lasso left to become director of the state’s Department of General Services. The COVID-19 pandemic and closures reduced attendance at the park drastically and reduced budgets accordingly.
“The park really required a champion, frankly — someone to really lift it up and say we need to break this down into specific pieces that we could advance,” Ambriz said.
Ambriz quickly expanded her team. She hired a new director of business development and is filling more than half a dozen other high-level jobs. Expo Park management is funding them by ramping up events — community fairs, dance parties, concerts and more — that generate income from parking and permit and facility fees, among other sources. Ambriz has begun laying the groundwork for a new foundation for the park to raise money from other foundations, philanthropists and corporate donors (much as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art does) rather than relying on public funds. That organization should be established by the end of this year, she said.
She’s also focused on ensuring that the park’s many institutions (with their often competing interests) are on the same page — an obstacle that has long challenged progress here.
She, along with California Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot, convened a meeting with park leaders, stressing how overall improvements would enhance each venue, draw new audiences and better direct visitors to each place. “We really need to be the sum of all of our parts,” she said. “Bringing more people to the park for a multi-institutional experience adds value to all of them.”
Ambriz achieved her first major victory within six months of starting her job, securing $14 million from the state to push the master plan from a preliminary outline to an implementable series of steps and priorities, and to start outreach and planning. That included dozens of meetings with area residents held at the park, in local classrooms and community centers and on Zoom, in English and Spanish. Creating a new green space, she said, was priority No. 1 for local residents, who have long been discouraged that so many of the park’s attractions require a paid ticket to access.
She is confident that each piece of the master plan can be achieved in the coming years. Some elements, such as improved wayfinding, a tree-lined east-west “museum walk” and streetscapes near the park’s eastern entrance (along Figueroa Street) and around the Natural History and Lucas museums, could be completed before the Olympics, she said. Expo has, she added, invested $500,000 in a site assessment to pinpoint the park’s most needed changes and repairs.
The biggest hurdles, of course, are time and money. Ambriz aims to raise additional public funds, but after having secured such a major outlay from the state, she may need to find private and philanthropic donors. She’s been pushing to raise awareness, both about the park’s needs and its possibilities, and said she has given up to 150 tours of the park in about a year and a half. (The cart she drives has needed to be serviced twice, she joked.) “People aren’t going to just say, ‘I’m going to give money.’ They have to understand there’s a vision. They have to have interest and incentive.”
She’s also open to new approaches such as naming opportunities and discreet advertising.
“We’re never going to rename this place as a whole,” she said. “But it’s fair to say, is there an opportunity for a donor to sponsor a bench or a wall or a bathroom? I think it also shows that people are invested in this park and want to see it develop.”
Even with the best-laid plans, questions remain. Can the park be upgraded without spurring gentrification in the area? (Ambriz pledges to maintain community outreach and partner with neighborhood leaders to help address this.) Will the ambitious timeline be met? Can Ambriz’s team minimize disruptions during construction? Will the new additions be more successful than BMO’s doomed food hall, the Fields LA? And can a balance be struck among the park’s many stakeholders — including locals, international visitors, its institutions and, soon, Olympic organizers?
Esther Margulies, a landscape architect and professor at USC, underscores the importance of addressing another priority — the environment, including habitat biodiversity, water conservation and stormwater management. “Greening is good, but that’s just Step 1,” she said. “The reason for doing this is to leave a legacy.”
SLATE-Z’s Mann, who has been coordinating with Ambriz on the park’s evolution, is confident that Ambriz can realize the full master plan.
“She has the depth of experience. And she has really great connections,” Mann said. “But her ability to dream, to be community-centered and to connect all the dots in the right way so that we’re really seeing what’s needed — that’s what she’s able to bring to the table.”
Ambriz is also very curious, added Torti Gallas senior principal Neal Payton, leader of the master plan. “She asks questions,” he said. “She’s really made an effort to understand the master plan and pledged to see it implemented.” He likened Ambriz’s job to that of a coxswain in crew, getting multiple participants, with their own “fiefdoms and lease lines,” rowing in the same direction.
“It’s such a difficult job,” he added. “That ability to get things running smoothly and then step back and [ask] what are the bigger things we need to be doing? She’s doing that. She’s definitely what the park needs now.”
