UP Park. Rewriting History Courtesy of Self-Serving City Hall
Here’s the text of a recent City of Fullerton press release about upcoming activity at the dismal Union Pacific Park on Truslow Avenue. See if you can read it without gagging.
The City of Fullerton Parks & Recreation Department, Smile Generation®, and KABOOM! are teaming up to bring a new kid-designed, community-built playground to Union Pacific Park—revitalizing a beloved neighborhood space and ensuring local children have a safe, inspiring place to play.
On Saturday, September 13, volunteers come together to construct the playground in a single day, with a ribbon-cutting and photo opportunities at 2:30 pm. The build begins at 8:30 am at Union Pacific Park, 121 W. Truslow Ave., Fullerton, CA 92832. Media and community members are invited to attend and experience the transformation in real time.
“Union Pacific Park’s reopening represents a new chapter for this neighborhood,” says Edgar Rosales, Fullerton Parks & Recreation. “The new playground will be at the heart of the park—where children can play, and families can connect and grow.”
Union Pacific Park, which had been closed due to past soil contamination, has since been fully remediated and declared safe for public use—clearing the way for its exciting rebirth as a vibrant community hub.
This project also advances KABOOM!’s 25 in 5 Initiative to End Playspace Inequity, a nationwide effort to ensure every child—especially those in under-resourced communities—benefits from the physical, social, and mental health advantages of play. Smile Generation joins as a proud partner committed to community wellness.
Let’s just ignore the tsunami of silly bureaucrat-speak about under-resourced neighborhoods, new chapters, vibrant community hubs, families connecting and growing, inspiring places to play, and the like. That’s just the sort of hyped-up rhetorical nonsense you’d expect from any semi-literate municipal scribe. It’s actually pretty funny in an unintended way.
But what’s this nonsense about the park being closed for “remediation” of contaminated soil, but now having been declared safe? That’s just a damned lie. The remediation happened at least 15 long years ago. The fact is that City Hall kept the park closed due its attractive quality to borrachos, drug addicts, Fullerton Toker Towners, and homeless vagrants. It’s been sitting there, a ugly monument to the incompetence of Fullerton’s six-figure pensioners, and two generations of city councils that never bothered ask any questions.
This multi-million dollar disgrace is not a “beloved neighborhood space.” Nobody asked for it. Nobody wanted it outside City Hall employees with other people’s money to waste.
And now the current city council is poised to dump more millions into the beloved space even though there is nothing changed from the societal pathologies that kept it closed in the first place. And nothing has changed about the City’s inability to properly maintain the parks it already has.
Oh well, I guess this makes sense in a certain perverse way. The council just agreed to blow 2.5 million bucks on the Trail to Nowhere without a single backward glance to note the complete failure of the UP Park and the embarrassing “Phase I” of the so-called trail that doesn’t even connect to Phase II. The current council seems no more curious about past failures than their predecessors. In fact, they’re doubling down on the previous Union Park fiasco. The only difference is they seem to want to fail in smaller increments.
This decades-long fiasco is a text book case of government lacking accountability for its failures. The “press release” is embarrassing.
Actually the communitypartucipatiob building this playground for the park was announced at a City Council Meetingby Councilmember Jamie Valencia who was a part of the eorkteam, since it is in her District.
Please excuse the typos- working on my phone.
Ruth – the U.P. park’s not in Valencia’s district.
It’s not her district and it’s a damn stupid idea.
Where did you find this City of Fullerton press release? I couldn’t find it on the City website.
Right here on the city’s official website
https://fullertonobserver.com/2025/09/06/city-of-fullerton-smile-generation-and-kaboom-unite-to-build-kid-designed-playground-at-union-pacific-park/
That’s what I was afraid of. Supposedly, the Observer story was attributed to the “Press Release from the City of Fullerton “. I wonder how much it was rewritten.
That’s a good question.
“… a beloved neighborhood space….,” Chat GPT?
Yeah, that’s pretty damn bad. I’ve never seen so many clichés crammed together in so short a space.
Beloved by drug addicts, prostitutes, and gangbangers.
Good to see Zahra’s Latino family back together again.
Suddenly they were all gone after the election.
Hmm. I guess they all liked each other, but it didn’t work out.
Incrementally going down the tubes. They have to be seen doing something, anything for photo ops.
Stop bitching. Investing in the community is paramount. It doesn’t matter if it works, what matters is that you show you care by spending a lot of money.
You can’t find truth spoken anywhere in Fullerton City Hall. Truth is a foreign language to city employees, hero union thugs, and city council creatures.
UNION PACIFIC PARK
Yes, what about it?
PASEO PARK
She swings. She misses. But nice pension, Susie.
It’s a damn shame the shade structure and restrooms were removed as the park is in dire need of new structures to vandalize, tag or steal.
Let the playground tagging begin!
Not a single mention of the money dumped into the beloved space that was COMPLETELY WASTED by Flory, Bankhead, Doc HeeHaw, Clearasil, Norby, Dudley, Armstrong, Chalupsky, Susan Hunt, et al. What was it? Three or four million?
That wasn’t real money. That was Redevelopment money, right?
Affirmative, Ling Cod. The funds used by the city to acquire the land from the U.P. for the “poison park” originated from the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency.
They could have just dug a hole there and dumped the money directly into it and saved everyone a lot of trouble.
Yep.