Los Angeles throws its biggest free party here every 31 December - tens of thousands counting down beneath City Hall at NYELA, the West Coast's flagship New Year's celebration. Gloria Molina Grand Park, running 12 acres from Grand Avenue at the Music Center down to Spring Street at City Hall, opened in July 2012 after a 56-million-dollar transformation of the old 1960s Civic Center Mall. Designed by Rios Clementi Hale Studios, the park descends Bunker Hill in four distinct rooms: the restored Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain with its wade-able splash pad and programmed light shows, an intimate performance lawn, a community terrace planted with drought-tolerant species representing LA's cultures, and the grand event lawn facing City Hall's white tower. Programming is the park's reason for being. Run by the Music Center - which also operates the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson and Mark Taper up the hill - the calendar packs in the six-block Fourth of July Block Party with downtown's biggest drone show, the Downtown Dia de los Muertos altars, lunchtime concerts, film screenings, food-truck rows and mass yoga sessions. The park was renamed in 2023 for the late county supervisor Gloria Molina, who championed its creation. Its opening bet - that downtown LA needed a true civic commons - has largely paid off: the Broad museum, Grand LA towers and a residential boom have filled in around it, and the park now functions as the region's default stage for civic celebration and protest alike. Access is the easiest in LA: the Metro B and D lines stop at Civic Center/Grand Park station inside the park itself, with garages beneath. Open daily until 10 pm; the fountain splash pad is the best free cooling in downtown summer. The opening itself set the tone - a multi-week celebration in summer 2012 with concerts, dance nights and food trucks that previewed the park's programming-first identity. The calendar has since settled into LA rituals: Lunar New Year and Pan African film festivals, summer movie nights on the event lawn, weekly lunchtime food-truck rows for the Civic Center workforce, and election-night gatherings that fill the lawns whenever the city has something to celebrate or contest.

Type: Outdoors

Address: 200 North Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, United States, 90012

Website: https://grandparkla.org

Opening Date: 28/07/2012

Outdoor Area

Pet Friendly

Accessible