Meiners Oaks' First Park Is Being Built Two Hours at a Time on a Former Car Wash Lot

The two acres at 312 E. El Roblar Drive have been empty for longer than many current Meiners Oaks households have lived here. The lot is now on its way to becoming a nature-focused public park. So far that work has mostly looked like paperwork, a run of grants that each covered one piece, and volunteers raking leaves on the second Saturday of the month. The last listed workday of 2026 is this Saturday, October 10. Construction has no completion date yet. Everything that has happened so far was done by neighbors working in public.

Why a Two-Acre Lot Sat Empty for So Long

Ventura County owns the property. The parcel number is 017-0-090-685, and the county's acreage is 2.04 acres. The lot used to hold a car wash and the house next to it, where the car wash's owner-operator lived. Ojai Valley News reported that the county bought the property after a lawsuit over groundwater contamination, then demolished the buildings.

The park group's 2022 concept proposal adds detail. It says the county paid $1.43 million and that the owners had alleged contamination tied to county activity. It also says the suit was dropped with no wrongdoing attributed to the county, and the parcel sat abandoned from then on. The two sources don't line up on timing. The proposal places the purchase in the mid-1990s, while the newspaper dates the lawsuit to 2003 and says the county bought the property after it. For anyone driving past, the outcome was the same either way. A public agency held a fenced, idle lot in the middle of the El Roblar corridor for a very long time.

The proposal also states plainly that Meiners Oaks had no public parks. Paula Power is a retired National Park Service biologist and Meiners Oaks resident who leads the effort. She told Ojai Valley News the community simply did not have a little park.

The Paper Trail Since 2021

The project is run by Meiners Oaks Parks, a local 501(c)(3) formed in fall 2021. Its FAQ says residents and valley businesses have donated skills and services. Power is president, and six directors plus a treasurer and secretary fill out the board. Taken in order, the public record shows how slowly a county lot becomes a park:

1. January 25, 2022. The group publishes its concept proposal.
2. November 2023. The county grants a Phase One access license, valid until November 7, 2024. It allows planning, design, environmental, engineering and permitting work only. Volunteers had to give 24 hours' written notice before entering the site and could only be there between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.
3. November 28, 2023. Assemblymember Steve Bennett's office announces $500,000 from the state budget, secured with Senator Monique Limón. District 1 Supervisor Matt LaVere supports the effort.
4. May 14, 2024. The Board of Supervisors takes up accepting that $500,000 as a California Department of Parks and Recreation grant, along with a planning agreement with Meiners Oaks Parks capped at the same amount.
5. October 16, 2024. A landscape plan sheet credited to Studio Landscape lays out native trees, pollinator and rain-garden plants, meadow plants and a Chumash garden palette.
6. September 17, 2025. A CEQA exemption is posted. It covers removing the old slabs and car wash infrastructure, grading under 10 percent, a curb, sidewalk, a small parking lot, play equipment, benches, picnic space and landscaping.
7. December 20, 2025. The group announces "We got the lease!" It marks the occasion with a construction kickoff on site, installing an owl box and a raptor perch.

That is four years from founding to a lease. Most of that time went to steps a passing driver would never see.

What the Plans Put on the Ground

The 2022 concept described a small neighborhood park with a full set of amenities: picnic tables, benches, natural play, a bandstand, a Portland Loo restroom, pollinator and meditation gardens, a game table, woodchip ground cover, and decomposed-granite paths and parking. The group's later call for sculptors adds more detail:

• A quarter-mile ADA-compliant path
• Separate play areas for children ages 1 to 8 and 8 to 12
• A 500-foot mural painted by local schoolchildren
• One to three site-specific sculptures

The mural has its own funding. In October 2025 the group received a $42,000 Arts in California Parks grant for arts programming. That covers the schoolchildren's mural and a sculpture competition, with Studio Tutto as the arts partner. The mural page says Studio Tutto will design it and Ojai Valley students will paint it. A separate $9,000 grant from the Ojai Women's Fund in 2025 paid for trees, nursery plants and border fencing.

The Money, by the Group's Own Count

The funding numbers explain why the construction timeline still says "TBD." The group's donation page asks for $1.25 million for planning and construction and says $650,000 is already in hand. The group reports those figures itself, and the page doesn't say when the tally was last updated. The FAQ uses a larger frame: about $2 million for planning and construction, plus a separate $2 million maintenance endowment. A December 2023 post also put the project at roughly $2 million.

The two goals probably cover different scopes. Either way, the state's $500,000 is the largest single piece, and it's matched to planning. The difference is being made up through events like Music Under the Stars 2.0. That benefit was held August 21, 2026, with Alan Thornhill, Martin Young and The Ruben Lee Dalton Band, at $75 a ticket. No results from the evening have been published.

The FAQ's estimate for completion is about two years once funding and partners are secured. That is a target with conditions, not a calendar date. The project timeline lists construction as January 2026 to TBD. Land clearing and grading are still on the task list, after the volunteer clean-up days.

Saturday, October 10, and the Work That Follows

The clean-up days are the visible stage of that construction phase. Volunteers met on second Saturdays from January through May 2026. The April date was cancelled. They resumed on August 15 and September 12, and October 10 closes out the listed schedule. The tasks are basic: picking up trash, hauling tree trimmings, raking leaves and spreading mulch. The group says people are also welcome to come by for information or to join the mailing list.

Sources list two different times. The park's own post says 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. The Ojai Valley News calendar lists 8 to 10 a.m. The organizers' own time is the safer one to plan around.

Some questions are still open. The lease terms announced last December haven't been published, and no public county record confirms whether permits or grading are complete as of early October. The owl box and raptor perch went up at the kickoff. The plan's birds, meadows and Chumash garden plantings come next, and then the children who will paint the 500-foot wall.

Down Lomita Avenue, a Nursery Reopens

The park is built around native plants, and a few blocks away the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy is finishing a project with the same focus. The OVLC nursery sits on the Ojai Meadows Preserve. To get there, turn onto Besant Road from Lomita Avenue in Meiners Oaks. The nursery is between the Ranch House and Meiners Oaks Elementary School.

OVLC describes the renovation as the product of four years of planning, fundraising and research. The work focused on drainage, clean growing surfaces, pathogen control, raised and separated plant blocks, and sanitation. It added a potting-medium mixer, a seed-cleaning workflow, steam sanitation and root-zone warming. Funding came from CAL FIRE and other donors, and the work was done by local contractors Nick DeYoung, Nick Wingate, Dan Colbeck and Bill Millet. OVLC's nursery page puts annual output at 10,000 plants. All of them are watershed-specific species grown from locally collected seed.

Three dates on the conservancy's calendar this fall:

• Saturday, November 7, 9 a.m. to noon. The Nursery Grand Opening Plant Sale at the renovated nursery. Species on the list include deerweed, California sagebrush and narrowleaf milkweed.
• Wednesday, November 11, 5 to 7 p.m. A free Rewild Ojai Happy Hour at Topa Topa Brewing Co. in downtown Ojai.
• Saturday, November 21, 9 a.m. to noon. A family Community Restoration Day to begin planting the demonstration garden around the nursery.

Both the sale and the restoration day connect to Rewild Ojai, OVLC's effort to expand native plant cover and link habitat across the valley. Gardeners can use the hyperlocal plant guide and free garden-design plans. They can also apply for certification by paying a $25 registration fee for a docent visit. Certification lasts three years. OVLC's fiscal year 2026 annual report counted 51 certified gardens covering more than 80 acres. Across the two projects, a single November could include a morning planting a demonstration garden on Besant Road and a few native plants carried home to a yard, all within walking distance of the El Roblar lot.

Land stewardship has been central to how we work in the Ojai Valley for more than two decades. A former car wash lot turning into native meadow is exactly the kind of local story we like to follow. If you'd like to talk about property in Meiners Oaks, or about the land and plantings around a home you already own, Patty Waltcher Team is always glad to hear from neighbors. Work With Us.