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A local journo wonders in email if the new Yvonne Brathwaite Burke Park in Marina del Rey, near where the retired county Supervisor used to claim she lived, will have a sister park in Brentwood, where she actually lived?
It used to be called Admiralty Park, by the way. The name change is unveiled today at 9:30.
* A little background: After the jump, hey, hasn't it been called Yvonne Burke Park for years? A deputy to Supervisor Don Knabe explains.
An L.A. journalist who knows these things emails:
The whole (and very appropriate) point here is that the park in Marina del Rey is not in the Second District, which Burke supposedly represented.It’s in Don Knabe’s Fourth District.
Burke briefly represented that district when she was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to fill a vacancy, but voters there didn’t want her and threw her out first chance they got. When she left, the supervisors renamed Admiralty Park for her – decades ago. Then they officially changed the name back when they found something else to rename for her (a health care center in Santa Monica, which also isn’t in the Second District, and in fact isn’t even in the Fourth), but the park signs still said Yvonne B. Burke Park when I used to go sailing out of Marina del Rey in the late 70s and early 80s.
County workers have been calling it Yvonne Burke park ever since. It was officially re-renamed for Burke last year, despite today’s ceremonies, but I don’t think it ever actually stopped being Yvonne Burke Park.
After reading this, Knabe's press secretary, David Sommers, emailed an update:
I wanted to expand on this item. Supervisor Knabe did a motion on November 18, 2008 to change the name of Admiralty Park after Supervisor Burke. During her original appointment to the Board of Supervisors in 1979, she represented the Fourth District, not the Second District, to which she was later elected. Deane Dana defeated her in the Fourth District election in 1980. Supervisor Burke was instrumental in advancing the development of a park running along Admiralty Way in Marina del Rey. As she said during her speech during the ceremony this morning, the park strip was supposed to be a massive parking lot, something she didn’t want. With Admiralty Park construction completed just after she left office the first time, the Board of Supervisors approved naming it the “Yvonne Brathwaite Burke Park.” Soon after, a recommendation was made to honor her service by renaming of the County's West District Health Clinic to the “Yvonne Braithwaite Burke Health Center.” The Board of Supervisors adopted this subsequent recommendation and rescinded its earlier park name order, instead calling it “Admiralty Park.” The public signs have said Admiralty Park ever since and we changed to the new signs this morning. Also, the writer is correct that the health clinic named after Burke isn't in the Second District, it's in Zev Yaroslavsky's Third District. The clinic used to be in the Fourth District when Burke represented the area. Before the 1990 redistricting, the Fourth District used to extend up the coastline all the way to Ventura County, including Venice and Santa Monica. Today the Fourth District ends at Marina del Rey.