At 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 30, 2026, the Meditation Gardens and grounds at the Self-Realization Fellowship International Headquarters closed. SRF says they will stay closed for the whole retrofit, which it expects to take about three years. The headquarters building closed two weeks earlier, at 5:00 p.m. on August 16. SRF has not given a reopening date. The closest replacements are not hard to find, but most of them run on a timetable: open days, a parking lot that empties at 4 p.m., a reservation page that opens each Saturday morning. Mount Washington can still give you a quiet, green hour. It just takes some planning now.
What is happening at the top of the hill
The project is centered on the building that started as the Mt. Washington Hotel in 1909. Yogananda dedicated it as SRF's headquarters on October 25, 1925, and Los Angeles listed it as a Historic-Cultural Monument in 2006. The building sits on an unreinforced masonry foundation. SRF plans to replace it with concrete within the original footprint, and to add a sprinkler system, which SRF says is the building's first. Pfeiffer Partners Architects, the firm behind the Griffith Observatory and Los Angeles Central Library renovations, is overseeing the work.
The Cable Car Building at the end of the main driveway was once the top station of the cable car that carried guests up to the hotel. SRF says it will be rebuilt, because it has no foundation and has wood rot that can't be repaired. The plans also include:
- Stabilizing the hillside around the historic buildings
- A new maintenance path to reduce related traffic on San Rafael Avenue and Rome Drive
- ADA access to the gardens, which SRF says is a first in the site's history
- A new visitor entry kiosk and upgrades to the existing entry gate
- A Garden Shrine of about 500 square feet inside the existing meditation gardens
The City's paperwork is public. A Notice of Exemption for the project was received and posted on July 31, 2026. It lists the site as 3846–3880 East San Rafael Avenue and 701–721 West Mount Washington Drive. The same record says an LADOT email dated November 17, 2025 found the project was not subject to a Hillside Construction Traffic Management Plan. It also says the haul route approval will carry conditions from LADOT and the Bureau of Street Services to monitor hauling traffic and cut haul trips when streets get congested. SRF says some construction traffic can't be avoided and that it will follow its own construction management plan. It also says the finished site will not draw more visitors than it does today.
SRF's January 2026 update said it hoped to start construction in fall 2026, once City permits came through. None of the records reviewed here confirm that work has started. For now, the gates are closed but trucks may not be on San Rafael yet.
Debs Park, where the clock matters most
The nearest large stretch of hillside open space is Ernest E. Debs Regional Park. The City lists it at 4235 Monterey Road, open daily from dawn to dusk. The Audubon Center at Debs Park, at 4700 North Griffin Avenue, sits on 17 of the park's 282 acres. This is where the schedule starts to matter. The Center is open Thursday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and closed Monday through Wednesday. Two of its trails, the Butterfly Loop and the Children's Woodland, are open only while the Center is open.
The two loops are very different walks. The Children's Woodland loop is short and ends at a viewpoint over Northeast L.A. The Butterfly Loop is longer and climbs. It is not ADA-accessible, and Audubon warns that poison oak may grow along it.
For a longer walk, Audubon gives the route to Peanut Lake. Head out the driveway past the green fire gate to Scrub Jay Trail, then take City View Trail and turn right at each junction until you reach the lake. The route is steep, has no shade and is not ADA-accessible. Dogs are allowed. If you're coming after lunch, keep in mind that the Audubon parking lot is open only until 4 p.m. Later visitors are directed to park on Griffin Avenue.
The Center's October calendar has a few dates worth noting.
| Date | Program | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, October 6 | Community Habitat Restoration | 8:30–11:30 a.m. |
| Saturday, October 10 | Art in Nature, free | 2–3:30 p.m. |
| Sunday, October 11 | World Migratory Bird Day community bird walk for beginners | 8–10:30 a.m. |
| Tuesday, October 13 | Community Habitat Restoration | 8:30–11:30 a.m. |
| Saturday, October 17 | Odeya Nini, "Call of the Starlings" | 10 a.m.–noon |
| Saturday, October 24 | Old Time String Jam Band session | noon–3 p.m. |
The two restoration mornings fall on Tuesdays, when the Center is otherwise closed to the public. Those mornings are a way onto the grounds early in the week, and the work leaves something behind on the hill.
Elyria Canyon, the closest walk without a set timetable
Elyria Canyon Park is the green space inside Mount Washington itself. The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority lists it at 1550 Bridgeport Drive and describes 35 acres of trails through coastal sage scrub, chaparral, grassland and black walnut woodland, with views of the city and the river. The MRCA trail map marks an entrance on Wollam Street.
Elyria is the closest match to an unplanned walk. The MRCA pages reviewed post no hours and no current closure notice. That doesn't prove it's open on any given day, so check MRCA's notices before you set out. Elyria lacks the rose beds and koi of a meditation garden. Its black walnut woodland is quieter, and you can walk to it from many Mount Washington streets.
When the afternoon allows a drive
The closest thing to what closed on the hill is SRF's own Lake Shrine at 17080 Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades. It also runs on the strictest schedule of the options here. SRF reported that the Lake Shrine gardens reopened on August 27, 2025, after the January 2025 fire, starting with the outdoor lake areas while remediation continued inside other buildings. Visits now need a free advance reservation. Garden visits run Wednesday through Saturday and on Sunday afternoons, with arrival windows of 10 to 11:30 a.m. or 1 to 3 p.m. Every visit ends by 4:30 p.m. Reservations for the following week open on Saturdays at 10 a.m. Pacific. The Gift Shop and Retreat are still closed until further notice.
The Encinitas Meditation Gardens at 215 W. K Street are a full day trip. They're open Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. They close on Mondays, holidays and rainy days. The Hermitage at the same address opens only on dates highlighted in its reservation calendar, closes in rain, and allows visitors 10 to 15 minutes inside.
Put side by side, the options sort by how much planning they take:
- Elyria Canyon Park has no posted hours in the MRCA listing, so check for notices and go.
- Debs Park is open daily from dawn to dusk. The Audubon trails and parking lot follow the Center's Thursday-through-Sunday, 8-to-4 schedule.
- Encinitas has fixed weekly hours, a long drive and rain closures.
- Lake Shrine needs a reservation from the Saturday release and a booked arrival window.
Coffee at the bottom of the hill
Without a garden at the top, a walk on the hill now tends to start or end down on Figueroa. Lumen Coffee at 5025 N. Figueroa Street lists daily hours of 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. That works for an early Debs Park walk but not a late-afternoon one. Café de Leche at 5000 York Boulevard is open daily from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and takes online orders for pickup. On the Cypress Park side, 1802 Roasters at 1206 Cypress Avenue is open daily and serves coffee, tea, bagels and pastries.
For the evening, Palomino at 5630 N. Figueroa Street took over the space ETA left in 2024 after about eight years. The Eastsider describes it as a cocktail bar with nightly DJs. Time Out reviewed it on September 22, 2026.
What the hill gets back
When the gates reopen, the site will have things it never had before: ADA access to the gardens, a ramp to the headquarters entry porch, an elevator to the upper floors, and a maintenance path meant to take service traffic off San Rafael Avenue and Rome Drive. Until then, SRF posts updates on its retrofit page and runs a project mailing list. Questions go to [email protected] or (323) 225-2471, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific.
A century-old building being carefully rebuilt above San Rafael Avenue is something Nichole Dunville follows closely as someone who works with historic homes across Pasadena and Northeast Los Angeles. If you live near the project and want to talk about how long-term work like this fits with caring for your own character home, let's connect.
