These are happy days for the Rose Park Neighborhood Association, comprised of homeowners in the Rose Park Historic District.

The group’s first-ever Restoration Trade Fair Sept. 21 drew more than 500 people. (Proceeds will go toward landscaping at nearby Luther Burbank Elementary School.)

And this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the association will dedicate a new gazebo in historic Rose Park, which gives the district its name, on Orizaba Avenue at Eighth Street.

“I am ecstatic about that. This is really something that–I wrote a grant, I don’t know, three or four years ago, Suja [Lowenthal] and I got together on that. It was right when she was campaigning to become councilwoman for this district,” said Rose Park Neighborhood Association President Kerstin Kansteiner.

Several years and two neighborhood partners grants later, and with considerable financial and actual assistance from the city Parks, Recreation & Marine Department, the gazebo and the first phase of the Rose Park restoration are ready.

“They actually gave us way more money than we ever anticipated to bring the park back and help the gazebo along,” Kansteiner said, noting that to date, the city has contributed more than $200,000 in grant and related monies.

That’s a lot of help, but progress sometimes has been uncertain. Like the day just recently when–with scrapyards across the region paying high bounties for steel–a man with a truck delivered the new metal gazebo unannounced at Rose Park.

“Thank God a neighbor noticed and called me and said ‘I think they just delivered your gazebo,’ ” Kansteiner said.

“We went over there and guarded it. [Second District Councilwoman] Suja Lowenthal was called, the police were called, public works was called, the parks and recreation department was called. I don’t remember when–but it was the early morning hours when they got a forklift from public works and carted it to safety.”

Now, the gazebo is up, roses are replanted, and part of Rose Parks concrete walkways have been repoured, and that’s what you’ll see on Saturday. But that’s only phase one.

“This is like the last big hurrah, and then we’ll close it again,” Kansteiner said.

The association hopes to begin the final part of the park’s restoration the following week–including more walkways, benches, trellises and native, low-water landscaping.

“We want to set the standard for the community,” Kansteiner said. “It can look pretty, but it can be drought-tolerant and have a sprinkler system that is satellite-coordinated.”

Tags: California, drought-tolerant landscaping, gazebo, Long Beach, Luther Burbank Elementary School, native plants, restoration trade fair, rose park, Rose Park Historic District, Rose Park Neighborhood Association, Rose Park Neighborhood Association President Kerstin Kansteiner, scrap metal prices, Second District Councilwoman Suja Lowenthal, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas