« Corporate Stranglehold On News Must End! | Main | Asian Wooly Hackberry Aphid Control 1000 Years Past Due »
January 30, 2007
Chipmunks, Turtles Invade Baroni Park
 |
| Chico's General Services Department is accepting
construction bids to build Baroni Park until February 8th (see
plans here).
Baroni Park is located adjacent to the Doe Mill Neighborhood and Chico
Creek Estates
subdivisions, in southeast Chico. Baroni Park was a long time in coming. Baroni Park represents an interesting (and a tad disturbing) trend in Chico's park design process. The “Baroni Neighborhood Park and Open Space Landscaping and Lighting District” was voted in by a 55% vote, with roughly a third of the eligible parcel owners voting. While the neighbors did vote to form the district to maintain the park, they opted for the lowest cost plan. |
| The park itself is very nice, and I'm
sure will be loved by neighbors. But Chicoans, when given the option,
are opting out of infrastructure commonly found in older parks. In the
case of Baroni Park amenities including a basketball court, public restrooms,
and a group picnic area were decided against. In other parks across town similar votes are occurring. It's not unexpected that people would vote themselves the lowest annual cost for a park. But a lack of these facilities will cause people to travel further from their neighborhood parks for recreation opportunities and organized activities like birthday parties. This will put additional pressures on community parks and in areas of Bidwell Park, when these neighborhood parks are supposed to reduce that pressure. In my experience basketball courts are almost always in use in neighborhood parks, and something similar should be part of the most basic park. A lack of restrooms makes a park much less of a destination and significantly reduces the ability for a family to stay for extended periods of time. Things like public tennis courts have nearly disappeared from Chico. It's hard to say that there's an answer to this problem, or if it even is a problem. But I watch as people say organized recreation belongs outside of Bidwell Park, and neighborhood parks are built without facilities, and I wonder what options there will be in a decade or two. The photos at the head of this post are some of the springer toys selected for Baroni Park. Don't ask me what's up with the kid on the chipmunk. I think he had a few too many Pixie Sticks before the photo shoot. Below is the play structure that will be built. All are from Playworld Systems. The play structure below appears to have a shade awning built over part of it, which is a pretty neat idea. |
|
Posted by Lon at January 30, 2007 12:00 AM
Comments
Lon -
Your comment of, "A lack of restrooms makes a park much less of a destination and significantly reduces the ability for a family to stay for extended periods of time." is spot on. By offering a park without a bathroom the city has effectively neutered its usefullness. What is the point of building a cool looking play structure if parents are unwilling to load up the family to go play because there is no bathroom.
This is a huge irritant to me. I live in the newly formed assesment district and could not believe the city offered a park without support as an option. While the park will be a nice stop-by it will not become a magnent for families for day-long (or afternoon-long, or even hour-long) use.
The city was negligent in offering a neighborhood park option without a bathroom. This goes hand in hand with other decisions they have made recently with regards to parks that are questionable at best (the ill-conceived parking lot at Horseshoe Lake, the Taco Bell bathroom in downtown plaza, etc).
At this point I think there should be a commitee formed in the city called the Commitee of Common Sense. No capital project (city or RDA district) could be started without getting the approval of the committee first. It would need to be formed by random citizens -- it would probably have to be formed by a jury duty type mandatory attendance. In this way none of the usual suspects could gum up the works with political grandstanding.
Imagine the dialog:
City Staffer: It would be cool to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to put in a new main parking lot in Upper Park that will last for the next 20 years. It's real cool because it congests traffic, accomodates fewer cars than the old haphazard lot, and has a neat porta pottie sculpture!
Committee: That's dumb. Make the lot 20 feet wider, the entrance 12 feet wider to accomodate 2 way traffic, and make it bigger to accomodate more visitors over the next 20 years and use the porta pottie sculpture money to do it.
Staffer: OK.
Of course there are all sorts of things wrong with my proposal -- including the fact that my neighbors actually voted (thereby functioning as the aforementioned committee) for the cripled park functions.
At this point I'm all worked up with nowhere to go. Damn.
More information about the voting process etc, can be found here: http://www.doemill.org/baronipark.html
Dave Brobst
Posted by: Dave Brobst at January 30, 2007 10:47 AM
Hey Dave,
I just read the Baroni Park web page for your neighborhood, and it says the open turf area could be used for frisbee golf.
What's great about that is that the 30,000-40,000 visits the Bidwell Park site gets annually has occurred without any parking or bathrooms since the city bought the property in 1994. So it looks like Baroni Park has all the amenities necessary to carry that load when disc golf is removed from the BLM property.
I'm kidding of course, but it points to shortcomings in the planning process for parks and recreation city wide.
I had heard that New Urban builders had offered to build Baroni Park in exchange for some acreage further east, but the City turned down the offer.
I wonder what was on the table at that time.
Lon
Posted by: Lon at January 30, 2007 03:33 PM