West Sacramento secures $15M in federal funding to revamp Bryte Park. When will work begin?
West Sacramento will receive $15 million in federal funding to reinvigorate Bryte Park, a treasured but timeworn greenspace nestled in a turn of the Sacramento River, the city and U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui announced Wednesday.
The modernization plan calls for an all-weather soccer field, an aquatics facility, a dog park, an outdoor amphitheater and plenty of green space and lights.
The Bryte Park ZIP code is a working-class neighborhood where 22% of residents had a bachelor’s degree in 2022 and the median household income sat at $68,226, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The average home prices there are about $421,000, according to Zillow, compared with the prices averaging roughly $620,000 for more modern homes in West Sacramento’s Southport neighborhood.
Rhonda Pope Flores, who grew up in the Broderick and Bryte neighborhood, said residents teamed up to demand this investment, pushing city council to end years of neglect and inequitable investment in West Sacramento’s north side.
In one example of disinvestment, she said, city officials allowed the pool at what is now Riverbank Elementary School to close rather than investing in its upkeep and renewal. This wasn’t just a school pool, Pope Flores said. Rather, she said, the city had provided funding to extend its hours for community use.
“They basically closed the pool and buried it — no community input, nothing,” Pope Flores said. “They just took our pool away, and that is what made us start advocating.”
Then they built a new recreation center and pool next to River City High School in Southport, much too far for Broderick and Bryte neighborhood children to travel to safely, Pope Flores said. They set up a free rideshare to get there, she said, but many parents didn’t feel safe letting their children travel alone with a stranger.
Pope Flores, who has lived in Elk Grove since the early 2000s, but she said she devotes her civic advocacy to the Broderick & Bryte neighborhood where four generations of her family have lived and where she still owns a home.
She said it was longtime Broderick and Bryte resident Sharl Castorena, her childhood softball coach, who inspired her to volunteer to advocate for her old neighborhood. Castorena passed away in 2015, nearly a decade too early to see this investment, Pope Flores said, but she and others picked up the torch and eventually found two advocates in city leadership.
“When Martha Guerrero was elected (mayor of West Sacramento), things started to change,” Pope Flores said. “She would listen. She would actually attend meetings, and Martha Guerrero and Norma Alcala were the only two council members that were supportive of our efforts.”
Guerrero said the new amenities will enhance quality of life, promote healthier lifestyles, and provide a space for families to connect and thrive.
Work is expected to begin in November 2025, said city spokesman Paul Hosley. No completion date has been set.
Lifelong West Sacramento resident Emiliano Rosas lives a few block from this green belt, played basketball in Bryte Park as a youth and has frequently walked the “beautiful levee trail” there that separates the park from the river. He is running against Alcala to represent the neighborhood on city council.
“This investment is going to just bring us up another notch as a neighborhood,” he said. “It’s really going to unify this neighborhood.”
In a Friday email, Alcala said that Pope Flores and neighborhood resident Maria Garcia should go down as champions in the fight to revitalize this park.
“These two mothers and the children of Broderick Bryte circulated petitions to bring the pool back to Broderick Bryte,” she said. “They also appeared at city council meetings and collected signatures in Bryte Park.”
Matsui said the park makeover represents a chance to make the historical Broderick and Bryte neighborhood healthier and more resilient.
This story was originally published September 27, 2024 at 7:00 AM.
