It weighed 10,000 pounds.
A backhoe lowered a mature Coast Live Oak into the ground as the crowd cheered, and community members took turns shoveling soil onto the new tree.
The groundbreaking marked the start of an ambitious transformation that had actually begun before the fire. Plans to turn the largely passive West Altadena park into a more active community and cultural center were already underway.
The fire gave that work a new urgency.
When completed, Charles White Park will include a new recreation center, lighted pickleball courts, a splash pad and creek-style water feature, an outdoor classroom and demonstration garden, improved walkways, gathering areas and exercise equipment.
Dozens of oaks, cedars, sycamores and other native trees will be added. A new playground, developed with Disney Imagineers, will feature nature-based and inclusive play areas.
The Walt Disney Company contributed $5 million toward the project. Significant state funding was also secured through Assemblymember John Harabedian.
“Altadena has been through a lot, and people deserve to have places like this to come back to,” Harabedian said. “Rebuilding a community also means rebuilding the places where people spend time together.”
That idea carried particular weight Saturday in a community still recovering from the January 2025 fire.
Rep. Judy Chu said residents had told her that the destruction of familiar gathering places was felt alongside the loss of homes and businesses.
“This was where kids learned to ride bikes, where neighbors became friends, and where this community gathered,” Chu said. “Today’s groundbreaking means Altadena isn’t just rebuilding, it’s coming back to life.”
The park also carries the name and legacy of Charles White, the acclaimed Black artist who lived in Altadena and chronicled African American life in drawings, paintings and prints during a career spanning nearly five decades.
His son, Ian White, said the renovated park’s public art and interpretive spaces will give visitors a deeper understanding of the artist behind the name.
“My father’s images reflect the African American experience from his native Chicago to New York to his adopted home of Altadena and beyond,” White said.
The project grew in part from community meetings where adults and children proposed ideas for the park.
For Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, that community role has become more important since the fire.
“Altadena has lost so much, but it has not lost its spirit,” Barger said.
As Saturday’s ceremony ended, the newly planted oak stood nearby, surrounded by tamped-down earth and the machinery used to place it there.
Much of the rebuilt park still exists only in plans. The first new piece of it, however, was already in the ground.
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