Linden-hills.com
POCKET PARK NEWS - PART 1
The Pocket Park is open for business. The plants and trees are in. The benches are in. The trees are... SMALL. So far. After two weeks. The pervious pavers look great: Kudos to LHiNC and specifically to Jeff Stites for making that happen. Without LHiNC’s money and Stites’ hard work, we would have stamped concrete on the park floor, instead of pavers. And it would be nowhere near so nice.
The pocket park is here for us all. Whether it looks that way or not - (and there will always be detractors)
The park is here for us to make of it what we will, starting now.
insert photo
It doesn’t have a name. I would love for it to have one.
The last pocket park, kind of a rambly-shambly spot to get a little green shade... is gone of course, and this “pocket park” is so different from that one. It doesn’t have a stated purpose - yet.
This park, in essence, does not have a history. It isn't anything, right now. Except a new space with a great floor, with trees about to grow and plants about to grow and benches to sit on... (coming soon!)
And it’s ours.
You could go there right now with a collapsible picnic table and put out a spread, and I could come over and sit with you and share your lunch. You could read your book there on sunny mornings, along with coffee and a treat from you-know-where. You could go there with a megaphone and proclaim, “The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!” It’s a public place.
So, this two-part blog is about making this park our own... How do we do that? What might we do there, as a Community. It’s clear enough, I hope, that people are welcome to go there with take-out from ANY of our superb eateries. People can relax there, after walking their dog. You can write in your journal on lunch hour, if you’d like.
It ain’t Central Park. And it hasn’t grown up yet. It’s a baby. In four years, the trees will be larger.
So what’s next? Well, there is this one thing: If you recall, one of the KEY things the community wanted was electrical power in the pocket park. We had meeting after meeting about this park. It was always one of the top things requested. And there is no public power.
And, the piano? It can’t be accompanied by anything you would want to plug in. Like a microphone. If you want to use electricity to demonstrate something in the park, there is no public power.
People worked very hard on behalf of our neighborhood.
We made it clear, what we wanted, what specific things
we desired. And maybe the easiest and cheapest thing
to provide - electricity in the park - didn’t get provided.
In next week’s blog, I’ll give you part two.
But I will leave you with this: I called the private contractor who acts as a liaison to the Mpls Special Services District, a subgroup within Public Works that maintains neighborhood Christmas decorations and planters in public places, and I asked this question: How much would it cost to fix this problem by retrofiting a three-prong outlet into the knee-wall planter, thus drilling down into the earth just beyond the retaining wall, going under the sidewalk, to the lamp post, where there is a SSD electrical meter. Answer to that cost question is pending.
Larry LaVercombe
Linden Hills Zoning Chair (2004-2015)
Realtor
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