New Fire Station Construction Begins
Small city park in old section of town is scary scene.

As the full moon rises and Halloween draws near, some ghoulish pranksters have cut down two park trees. Wait! It was a construction crew sanctified by the park department. Usually, the park department is issuing news releases looking for the culprits who vandalize a park in this fashion. It's the city whose done it this time. Now who ya gonna call, Ghost-busters?

The scary part is, the park department and the city don't know that building new buildings in small parks is a recipe for urban sprawl. People will get in their cars and drive to newer neighborhoods for newer parks. They may even move to newer neighborhoods. This puts pressure on those parks and makes urban sprawl worse. It's a bad idea to use park land in neighborhoods as new building sites. Tearing down good existing buildings is also wrong and wastes community resources. We all pay the bill for for this type of thinking. Urban sprawl continues unabated. If civic leaders can't make good decisions, how can we expect the general public to?

 

The arrow points to the recreation building, built in the mid-1960's, to be destroyed and used as quality fill material in our landfill. This area of the park was used as an ice-skating rink and has a wading pool.

 

Two down and more to go. The existing green ash trees are being cut down to make room for the new and bigger fire station.

 

This is the old fire station in the park, built in the 1950's. Guess this city and park department still haven't learned that building in parks is short-term thinking. Past mistakes aside, it is still a very good building for other community activities. Why tear it down?

Hint: The door heights don't match. (This really bugs some people).

 

This old burned-out house is located one-half block from the park. Why not build the new fire station here and improve the community at the same time? The Committee To Appreciate and Save Our Old Dilapidated and Dangerous Haunted Halloween Homes fought to save it. Played backwards on a tape it says, "redrum redrum redrum rou sdoohrobhgien."

 

Old homes were moved off these lots last year two blocks from the park and have no landscaping or surface water control. Now it's an unpaved parking lot for a business. They can buy old places for parking, why must the city rely on park land to build? Maybe the city and park department just need examples to learn from? The Scarecrow, Lion, and Tinman went off to see the Wizard when they had problems. For 10 points on our Halloween Costume Trivia Quiz, can anyone tell me what they were?

 

Here is another park. Same town, different old neighborhood. The low income residents around it use it a lot. Now the school district wants to build a new school on it and tear down the old school a few blocks away. Maybe they have dendrophobia, or worse, xylophobia? Yikes! Maybe they think people don't need parks to play in with their kids?  After all, there is a labor shortage in this country. Maybe the park users should go get a third part-time job and stay out of the park altogether? That way we could utilize our "free" park land in our town for more useful purposes. Prisons come immediately to mind.

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What scary projects is your community planning for Halloween?
e-mail jb@redfly.com.

Copyright 1999 by Jeffrey C. Baston, NCARB, AIA