Santa Monica’s long-fractured Pico neighborhood just got a potential lifeline from Washington, as the City Council voted this month to accept a $2 million federal planning grant to explore whether a stretch of Interstate 10 can be capped and turned into parkland. The study will zero in on the corridor between 11th and 20th Streets, looking for realistic cap-park locations along with bike and pedestrian upgrades that could help stitch the neighborhood back together. Councilmembers framed the move as an effort to address long-standing harms tied to the original freeway construction.
According to a U.S. Department of Transportation factsheet, the money comes from the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program and appears under the name “Reconnecting Pico Neighborhood: Santa Monica.” It is described as a $2,000,000 community-planning grant focused on studying cap parks and related active-transportation improvements, with an estimated total project cost of about $2.5 million. The federal summary notes that the work will examine feasibility, phasing and possible sites for decked parks over the I-10 corridor between 11th and 20th Streets.
What the study will examine
City staff told the council the grant-funded work will deliver a feasibility analysis, an existing-conditions study and a prioritized list of potential cap-park locations across what they estimate is roughly a 25- to 30-acre corridor. Senior Park Planner Antonio Lopez boiled the concept down for councilmembers, saying, “It’s basically a park on top of a highway.” Staff stressed that the effort will not produce final designs. Instead, it will look at structural limits, utilities and mobility trade-offs that would come with building a lid over the freeway. The council formally accepted the grant on June 9, and the award requires a local match of about $505,712, which the city intends to cover through staff time and Park and Recreation Development Impact Fee revenues, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press.
How this fits a national trend
The Santa Monica study is part of a broader national push to reconnect communities that were carved up by highways, often in lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Across the country, federally backed projects are testing out cap parks, new pedestrian links and fresh street connections to soften the concrete scars left by mid-century freeway building. Streetsblog USA reported that the Reconnecting Communities program has supported a slate of California planning efforts, while the federal awards factsheet lists dozens of fiscal year 2024 recipients pursuing cap-park, underpass-activation and multimodal plans nationwide.
Next steps for Pico
For now, Pico residents will have to be patient. Staff told the council the city is waiting on a final grant agreement with Caltrans and expects to put out a request for proposals to hire a consultant, with work anticipated to start in spring 2027. The timeline approved by the council calls for a final report by July 31, 2029, and a grant budget period that runs through January 31, 2030. Councilmembers urged staff to make sure outreach centers current Pico residents as well as people displaced when the freeway was built, and several pressed for the study to compare capping with long-term options like freeway removal or a boulevard concept, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press.
