This fall’s anticipated debut of the Sankofa Park component of the new Destination Crenshaw public space redesign from Perkins&Will and Studio-MLA in Los Angeles has been pushed back to February of next year, according to an announcement made Wednesday by the group managing its construction in the city's Leimert Park neighborhood. 

The park had previously received $3.4 million in federal funding, which added to another $2.4 million fundraising drive initiated by actress Issa Rae and star NBA guard DeMar DeRozan. Planners have now set Sankofa Park to open on February 24th. It is part of the larger $100 million project that will transform a 1.3-mile corridor into a new arts-oriented civic space. Perkins&Will says it is “destined to be a space for celebrations, protests, and demonstrations of grief and peaceful healing.”

Once it is completed, Sankofa Park will include art installations from blue-chip names like Alison Saar and Kehinde Wiley. Additional murals, storytelling installations, and landscaping will be installed along the site, with a copper-toned metallic viewing platform and walkway structure being constructed over the site for visitors' access. 

The mythic Sankofa bird from Akan folklore serves as the naming metaphor. Other elements are designed in homage to the Middle Passage and The Great Migration of Black Americans from the southern United States to California in the 1920s.

“This is not just a passion project for Perkins&Will but rather one that reinforces our focus on just and equitable design,” the firm’s Principal and Director of Global Diversity, Gabrielle Bullock, said in a preview of the project this winter. “It emerged from a very intensive and intentional community engagement process, which resulted in an authentic design created with the community. It has reinforced our social impact ethos as a design practice. We look forward immensely to seeing the community claim it as their own.”

More updates about the construction of Destination Crenshaw can be found here via X.