Construction to turn the 16-acre Weddington Golf & Tennis facility in Studio City into a nearly $200-million Harvard-Westlake sports complex began last April.
The big surprise — or maybe it’s not a surprise — is how many buried golf balls have been discovered dating to the 1960s.
“We’ve saved thousands of golf balls,” school spokesman Ari Engelberg said.
There are so many golf balls that Harvard-Westlake will hire an artist to turn them into a school logo.
Jim De Matté, the chief of construction, has found balls with the names of two previous owners, George McCallister and Joe Kirkwood Jr., on them. It makes perfect sense since the driving range was there for more than 60 years.
De Matté is certain the many Harvard-Westlake facilities — a gym that seats more than 1,000; a 50-meter plaster pool; two athletic fields; eight tennis courts; an underground parking garage for 382 cars — will be ready for use in the fall of 2026.
“Nothing is going to stop us,” he said when asked about possible weather or other delays.
Harvard-Westlake paid more than $40 million for the land in 2021, then had to go through years of community meetings while getting permits and receiving permission from the city to build.
The final project, named River Park, should be a boon for the community. It’s designed to be accessible to the public, with WiFi available, the old golf clubhouse and putting green preserved, and lots of opportunities for community members to use the new pool, two sports fields, eight tennis courts and a new cafe in the clubhouse.
The underground parking lot is probably the most valuable part of the property. Harvard-Westlake attempted for years to improve its parking situation for the upper school located on Coldwater Canyon Boulevard. Neighbors fought a proposal to build a structure across the street.
The current parking area has spaces so small that accidents and dents are common. The spaces at the new structure will be more than a foot wider at 9 feet 6 inches (insurance companies will be thrilled). The school plans for an after-school electric bus service to get students to River Park, but it won’t be an auxiliary lot for the upper school campus.
Harvard-Westlake’s No. 1-ranked boys’ basketball team likely will start playing games in the new gym when it opens, but the school will have three gyms available, allowing for more options for gym use.
There will be an all-weather track and the sports fields will be used primarily for soccer and lacrosse. Head of athletics Terry Barnum said the school is committed to adding girls’ flag football once the facility opens, plus freshman teams for boys’ and girls’ soccer and girls’ lacrosse. A retention basin will have more than 300,000 gallons of treated water for taking care of the complex.
On May 22 there will be a ceremony as the steel frame for the gym goes up.
“What we love about River Park is that it will be the premier private-public partnership in Los Angeles,” Barnum said. “We’re excited how it’s going to be a legacy not only for our school but the greater Studio City community. The expansion is going to make our sports programs more efficient and get students home quicker.”
Nothing, however, will have a bigger impact than larger parking spaces. There’s an Instagram account showing all the fun (and bad parking) that takes place at the current parking area.
“No more fighting for spaces,” Barnum said.
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