Stormwater Capture NOT Storm Troopers
Your guide to raising millions of dollars to build a park in Northeast LA.
Imagine a world where more dollars go to storm water capture than to weapons of war.
Yesterday morning at 7:30 am in Downtown LA on the rooftop terrace of the Kenneth Hahn Administration Building, for a moment it felt like that could be true. More than 100 people gathered for a Measure A award ceremony where $78 Million dollars was divided among recipients of 72 grants.
Stephanie Campbell of California State Parks, Arturo Garcia of The Nature Conservancy, Clockshop’s Executive Director Sue Bell Yank and I participated in a ceremony where we were given an oversized stand-in foam core check for ~$2.9 Million. These funds help us get one step closer to our goal of ~$26 million and will go directly to implementation of the Bowtie Wetlands and Phase 2 of the Bowtie Park Project.
This year’s pot of money—$78 million!— was the largest amount of tax payer dollars for funding parks, open space and water conservation across LA County.
And it felt like it couldn’t happen a moment too soon.
At 7 am yesterday it was already unseasonably hot, the view of the San Gabriels was clear, reminding us that our watershed, and the creeks, tributaries, and rivers that run through it need our help and protection. It was uplifting to be among the 71 other cities, agencies, and organizations who are doing the work to bring more conversation and green space to LA County.
The list of awardees is humbling.
Regular readers of this Substack might know that over the past six years—but most intensely over the last two years—part of my job at Clockshop has been dedicated to filling the gap in funding that is needed for construction of Phase 2 of the Bowtie Park project. Since 2022, the gap for construction funds has wavered between $4 to $6 Million. As of 2024 we had raised close to $18 Million (see the full list below.) We are aiming for a total of $25 Million.
A question you might ask, reader, is why Clockshop is raising these funds?
Answer:
•because we can
•because we are good at it
•because we believe that the project will happen faster and more true to what the community wants if we participate.
Some helpful background:
Since 2022, Clockshop has been a “Cooperating Association” of California State Parks. This means that we have a legal agreement with the agency to provide programming, interpretation and support at the Bowtie. We stopped doing programs on site when the pandemic began but we continued to work towards our goal of getting the park built. We are committed to realizing the goal of a community welcome center at the park and we know that this amenity might be the first thing to go if the budget is tight.
A little more background: In 2019 we worked with our partners to raise $500,000 for conceptual design and engagement through an appropriation of the State General Fund. You might be wondering right now – “What is an appropriation?”
An appropriation is a request for funds that comes directly from an elected toward the state general fund or to a particular pot of money that electeds have access to. In 2019 we worked with Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo and Senator Maria Elena Durazo to request $500K from the State General Fund. They could do this by submitting a letter requesting funds to both the Senate and Assembly budget committees. These committees then hash out their budget (called the “May revise”) and then negotiate with the Governor and his proposed budget in June. Then, hopefully, the budget is voted on before the end of June. Some years there is ample funding, others there is not a lot or nothing.
In 2019 there was funding.
We were lucky to have the $500K approved, it then went directly to California State Parks where a Request for Proposals went out from the agency. Clockshop was a collaborator on one team among three who were finalists for the contract.
We proposed a plan for community engagement working in partnership with RADAR and SALT. Our approach was informed by 5 years of programming we had conducted at the Bowtie and knowledge of the surrounding neighborhoods. During the pandemic we engaged the surrounding neighborhoods to learn what people wanted to see happen at the Bowtie.
In 2020 we began our outreach by working through the pandemic, reaching out to people in vaccine lines and food distribution lines. We had a Bowtie Youth Council which was made up of 10 young people who reached out to their peers. We went to the neighbors instead of asking them to come to us. We finished this work in 2021 and were buoyed by these two bumps in funding:
We worked with California State Parks and our partners at LA River State Park Partners to complete an application to the National Park Service Outdoors Recreation Legacy Partnership Programs1 requesting $5 million. Our application was successful.
The State of California matched these funds and then some.
The Department of Parks and Recreation (California State Parks) put in $11 Million from the Waterways Connection Initiative2
Working with State Parks our work at the Bowtie had helped to raise $16 mIllion by 2022. I was burnt out and realized that I no longer had capacity to be the Executive Director of Clockshop; the pandemic leveled me and I needed a break.
I wasn’t quite sure how I would proceed but I knew that raising funds for the Bowtie build out was high on my priority list moving forward. We still had about ~$8 - $9 million to raise to see the Bowtie move forward and become a park. The numbers kept shifting around because the plans were not complete and costs of construction kept going up.
There were many moments when the amount of money needed seemed overwhelming. Raising money for public space on the Northeast side of LA is not easy! There are no private donors who can contribute millions on this side of town and government funds kept dwindling.
However, whenever I paused and reflected on the billions of dollars that are spent on weapons of war, or on entertainment, or on AI, all of a sudden several million dollars felt within reach. If massive sums can go to all sorts of destructive forces, why can’t we find millions for a positive project that restores habitat, conserves water, and benefits both humans and animals?
That thought is what has kept me going – kept me knocking on doors, cold calling, introducing myself to people whom I don’t know, and holding onto a sliver of belief that this is what our river and communities deserves. And, good news is we are getting close.
Slowly some other chunks of money came through.
$2.8 Million was granted from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. And then several years later, Congressman Jimmy Gomez appropriated $959,721 from an EPA Community Grant.3 Under the past presidential administration, this was something that was possible. When the current administration took over we were very concerned that these funds would be taken away. But thanks to support from the California Community Foundation who covered the cost of grant-writers, we were able to finish the necessary application to the EPA and get that money to California State Parks this year.
2025 was hard in too many ways. I knocked on a lot of doors and very little came through.
Then, in 2026 a flood of things happened that we didn’t expect. About three weeks ago we got an astounding and surprising call from Congressman Jimmy Gomez that the House had voted to move forward on granting the Community Project Fund grants and the Bowtie Welcome Center would be awarded $2 million from the Community Project Fund through HUD4
And that brings us to yesterday where we accepted a large mock check for $2.9 Million from Measure A through LA County bringing the TOTAL RAISED as of 2026
To ~ $24,659,721 for Phase 2 of the Bowtie.
A big thank you to Kelsey Henck of California State Parks and Maisie Peters for their work on the Measure A grant. Without their support, these funds wouldn’t have come through.
Sometimes it feels like raising these dollars has been so piecemeal. Do we need to bring back the old refrain that is something like, “Bake Sales not Bombs.”?
I thought we might have left that behind, but sadly no, the empire of defense contractors keeps chugging forward.
But Los Angeles is full of good bakers.
See you at the Bowtie!
The Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) is a nationally competitive grant program that provides funding to enhance recreation opportunities in rural and urban communities. ORLP’s funding enables these communities to create new outdoor recreation spaces, reinvigorate existing parks, and form connections between people and the outdoors.
The Waterway Connections Initiative (WCI) is a California State Parks program funded through 2027 that expands public access to inland waterways, such as rivers and lakes, for underserved “Priority Communities”. It provides roughly $10 million annually for infrastructure improvements (boat launches, trails, campgrounds) and educational programs to enhance recreational opportunities and stewardship.
Projects funded with EPA Community Grants provide a valuable source of federal funding for water infrastructure that will complement the resources Congress provided in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the annual appropriations process.
The Community Grant fund through the EPA was eliminated by the current administration. Funds that had been appropriated through congress members were not eliminated. We were able to work with the EPA program officer to do the application and funds were granted in 2026.
Community Project Funding (CPF) grants provide investment in a wide variety of projects such as housing, homelessness prevention, workforce training, public facilities, parks, resilience planning and other critical infrastructure and services.
$25m. Thats amazing.