Gloria Molina Grand Park

Gloria Molina Grand Park — twelve civic acres stepping from the Music Center down to City Hall

Downtown Los Angeles keeps its front lawn in plain sight. Twelve acres of terraces fall across four blocks from Bunker Hill to the tower of City Hall, tied together by a 1960s fountain, hundreds of movable magenta chairs and gardens planted to represent the whole world. On an ordinary weekday the park holds office workers eating lunch under olive trees, toddlers steaming in and out of the splash pad, wedding parties fresh from the courthouse and at least one film crew. On New Year’s Eve it holds tens of thousands. County-owned, free and relentlessly programmed, it is the closest thing this city has to a civic living room.

Highlights

• Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain — built in 1966 for the original Civic Center Mall and named for the county’s chief administrative officer of 1951–1957; the 2012 rebuild kept the great circular basin and added a shallow splash pool, programmable jets and color-changing LEDs.
• Fountain Plaza — the upper block beside the Music Center, the park’s default meeting point and, all summer, its unofficial children’s swimming pool.
• Olive Court — a shaded plaza of olive trees arranged around benches and speaker poles preserved from the 1960s design, still the setting for community gatherings and small ceremonies.
• Performance Lawn — a compact lawn with a stage scaled for lunchtime concerts, dance sets, art shows and cultural festivals rather than stadium crowds.
• Event Lawn and Community Terrace — hard-wearing turf on the lowest blocks with City Hall as the backdrop; this is where the New Year’s Eve countdown and the largest festivals land, with a fenced dog run tucked into one corner.
• Twenty-four botanic gardens — roughly 140 plant species chosen to represent the world’s six floristic kingdoms, threaded along meridian paths, with park signage translated into 25 languages under the motto “the park for everyone.”

What you’ll find

The park reads as four connected blocks, each with a different job, linked by wide steps, looping walks and ramps that keep the entire slope step-free for anyone who needs it to be.

• A splash pad set in the fountain’s lower basin, free to use in warm months; the upper pools are off-limits to waders.
• A children’s playground, restrooms and a coffee kiosk on the middle blocks, plus little free libraries stocked by volunteers.
• A fenced dog run on the Event Lawn, with leashed dogs welcome across the rest of the park.
• Hundreds of movable magenta chairs and tables that visitors drag into sun or shade, plus fixed benches under olive and palm groves.
• Drought-tolerant planting beds arranged by continent, labeled and maintained as a working botanical collection rather than decoration.
• County parking garages directly beneath the lawns, paid and entered from the surrounding blocks.

Things to do — and who it’s for

• Families with small children — the splash pad plus playground make a free downtown outing that needs no booking and no car.
• Downtown workers — lawns, shade and movable furniture turn a lunch break into a genuine hour outdoors.
• Festival-goers — free flagship programming runs all year, from summer house-music dance parties to the New Year’s Eve countdown.
• Photographers — the long axis down the terraces frames City Hall dead center, and the fountain lights make dusk the best shooting window.
• Culture visitors — the upper end sits between the Music Center, The Broad and MOCA, so the park works as the interval between exhibitions or before a concert.
• Dog owners — a dedicated run at the bottom of the park and long leashed loops on the terraces above it.

Getting there & practical

The park occupies the Civic Center district of Downtown Los Angeles, wedged between the courthouses, the county offices and the Bunker Hill arts venues. Metro’s B and D Lines stop at Civic Center/Grand Park station, whose stairs surface at the park itself; the A and E Lines add Grand Av Arts/Bunker Hill at the Music Center end and Historic Broadway in the middle, and Union Station is minutes away by rail. Entry is free and unticketed; the park is open daily from 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Paid county garages sit directly beneath the lawns, though downtown one-way traffic makes driving the slowest way in. Alcohol, drones and open flame are prohibited, wading in the upper fountain pools is not allowed, and dogs stay leashed outside the run. Walking the full length takes about fifteen minutes; an unhurried visit with a picnic runs an hour or two, and event days ask for considerably more.

When to visit

Spring is the gentlest season: cherry trees flower near the flag court, the botanic beds come into color, and midday temperatures still allow a lunch on the open lawn. Summer belongs to water and music — the splash pad runs daily, free Sunday dance sessions fill the terraces into the evening, and the Fourth of July brings a drone show; heat on the unshaded turf is real, so the olive groves, the fountain spray and after-work hours are the smart choices. Fall is the park’s most atmospheric stretch, when Día de los Muertos programming covers the terraces with community altars in late October and early November under warm, clear skies. Winter is quiet by day and enormous for one night: the New Year’s Eve celebration projects light onto the City Hall facade for a crowd that fills every block. January and February also deliver the sharpest air and the cleanest photographs of the year.

Good to know

A civic park on this slope was first proposed in 1907 by the landscape architect Charles Mulford Robinson. Work only began in 1956, to designs by Cornell, Bridgers and Troller, and the finished Civic Center Mall was dedicated in 1966 as El Paseo de los Pobladores de Los Angeles, honoring the 44 settlers who founded the city in 1781. It was a formal Beaux-Arts composition laid over a subterranean garage: terraces of olive and palm groves, pools and fountains above, statues of Washington and Columbus on the plaza below. By the 2000s it had become a place people crossed rather than used. The redevelopment by Rios Clementi Hale Studios, financed largely by Related Companies as part of the county’s Bunker Hill redevelopment, opened in July 2012 as Grand Park — keeping the 1966 fountain and rebuilding nearly everything around it, with the Music Center taking over operations. On March 21, 2023, the county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously, on a motion by Hilda Solis, to rename it for Gloria Molina: the first Latina elected to the California State Assembly, to the Los Angeles City Council and to the county Board of Supervisors, who represented the First District from 1991 to 2014 and drove the park’s creation. She died that May. The park is slated to serve the 2028 Olympic Games as a venue for road events.

Visitor tips

• Check the events calendar first: on production days whole blocks are fenced off, while on a quiet weekday morning the terraces are effectively yours.
• Bring a towel and dry clothes if children are along — the splash pad wins every time, and shade near the fountain runs short by midday.
• Arrive by rail. The station exits inside the park, which saves both the garage hunt and the one-way loops around the Civic Center.

Questions & answers

Is there any charge to enter? No. The park is free and unticketed, open every day from 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and its flagship events — the summer dance sessions, the Día de los Muertos program, the New Year’s Eve countdown — are free as well.

Can children play in the fountain? Yes, in the splash pad built into the lower basin of the Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain, with its programmable jets. Entering the upper pools is prohibited, so plan on the splash pad and pack a towel.

Are dogs allowed? Yes. There is a fenced dog run at a corner of the Event Lawn, and dogs are welcome everywhere else on leash. Owners clean up after their animals; the park’s rules are enforced by its own security staff.

Which Metro station is closest? Civic Center/Grand Park on the B and D Lines opens directly onto the park. The A and E Lines serve Grand Av Arts/Bunker Hill by the Music Center and Historic Broadway toward the middle blocks.

Why the name Gloria Molina Grand Park? The Board of Supervisors renamed the park in March 2023 for Gloria Molina, a trailblazing county supervisor for the First District from 1991 to 2014 who was instrumental in turning the tired Civic Center Mall into today’s park.

How much time should I allow? Half an hour covers a walk from the fountain to City Hall. Budget one to two hours to picnic, use the splash pad and see the gardens, and a full evening for a festival or the New Year’s Eve celebration.