Huge crowd at 1st city-organized California Place Park meeting

We’re at Hiawatha Community Center for the first city-organized meeting on the proposal to add a “playscape” to California Place Park. About 100 people here – biggest turnout we’ve seen at a public meeting in a while. The “no change” crowd seems to have the most vocal representation so far. City Parks Superintendent Tim Gallagher (at left in the photo above) addressed the crowd at the start of the meeting. Full report later. 7:48 PM NOTE: It’s been contentious at times – emotional at times – this is the first of four meetings – no dates for the future meetings are set yet. We will let you know the moment they are. Full details to come.

3 Replies to "Huge crowd at 1st city-organized California Place Park meeting"

  • acemotel November 6, 2008 (8:37 pm)

    Thank you very much for covering this meeting. I couldn’t attend due to a conflict, and appreciate your reporting.

    You provide such a valuable service. The building blocks of democracy are hyperlocal!

  • acemotel November 6, 2008 (8:38 pm)

    ETA: looking fwd to the report! (edit function seems to be missing…)

  • SpeakLoud November 6, 2008 (8:40 pm)

    I just got home from this meeting and am struck by what a diverse and aware community we have. I really apprechiated hearing the concerns and the reasons why people didn’t want anything to happen to the park. I have to agree that open space is few and far between-but what I also heard was that people enjoy being at the park to enjoy the beauty of it, that the seasons allow for nature to teach and that it’s a great place to roll in the leaves and make snowmen.
    I believe all of these things will still be true with some small and unobtrusive additions such as a few park benches, a couple of raised beds for community gardening (not a pea patch with assigned or rented spots)and 1 log and 3 boulders. It could be as simple as this. It could be less or more.
    Either way the process has started so lets not waste any more time debating how it got started-the city council is the place for those concerns now-instead lets make sure we stay apart of the process and make sure our ideas are considered.
    I think everyone was heard tonight and I have no doubt that will continue to be the piece that makes this community process work.
    There is a way to meet everyone’s needs-just stay open and you might be very surprised at what is created. Ironically we all want the same thing we just have different visions of what that looks like!

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