Jacksonville's Central Park?

Map of exisiting, proposed, and needed walks and greenways.

A question was asked on the MetroJax message boards about making the Hogan’s Creek parks the “Central Park” of Jacksonville.

This is not a new concept. Many people who have been involved in the parks over the years have mentioned this as a desire. Someone else asked about the size of the parks, and I thought I would compare them to other city’s “marquee” urban parks.

Downtowns Historic Springfield district parks make up about 37 Acres of parkland. This is made up of Confederate Park and playground, H.J. Klutho Park, W.W. Schell Park, and McPherson Park. This does not include any connecting land between Liberty the Northbank Riverwalk, which in an ideal work would complete a Hogan’s Creek Greenway.

By comparison, Boston Common is 48 acres, while New York’s Central Park is an unbelievable 843 Acres. Denver has about 80 acres of urban parks split between Civic Center Park, Sky Line Park, Sunken Gardens, Commons Park, and Confluence Park. Atlanta’s Piedmont Park is about 185 Acres, but includes the Botanical Gardens and 50 acres of undeveloped parkland. Charlottes Freedom Park comes in at 107 acres, but it well outside of the urban core.

In Florida, Miami’s Bayfront and Bicentennial parks are about 50 acres. And Orlando’s Lake Eola and Ivanhoe parks combine for 31 acres, not including the water.

Keep in mind also, if our historic districts parks were to be "redeveloped", they could be even larger because the south side of the creek is mostly undeveloped city property.

In all, if the Hogan’s Creek and McCoys Creek Greenways were to be completed and tied into the Riverwalk system, it would give Jacksonville over 8 miles of nearly contiguous access to the river and urban greenspaces. They would also be tied into other river front parks like the Kids Kampus, Metro Park, and Memorial Park when the Northbank Riverwalk is extended. You could walk from Shands to 5points, or from Cummer to the Stadium with minimal interaction with traffic.

If we do this right, we may not have the largest urban park system, but we will have one of the most unique urban parks in the US.

Nine Outta Ten Ain’t bad

W.W. Schell Park, Summer 2005

Here is a joke for you. How many soil samples have to be slightly above allowable levels to bring the construction of Schell Park playground to a screeching halt?

One would be the correct answer. Out of ten soil samples, one came back with slightly elevated levels. Levels of what we aren’t sure. I might have been slightly elevated levels of peanut butter; sadly, we weren't given the specifics. Which chemical compound in the soil they are measuring, we really don’t know, but the magic number to trigger this was over 200 part per million, (PPM). One of the samples there was 226 PPM of peanut butter, while the rest passed.

What does this mean? This means that the failing sample will be reanalyzed, and as long as on the re-testing it does no exceed 400 PPM of peanut butter, the park will be completed.

The testing is supposed to be completed by Friday, so we will keep you in the loop. It does lead one to ask, if the acceptable number is really 400, why wouldn’t they just set the limit to 400, rather than 200 initially, and cause all this anxiety?

There was a meeting today regarding the Hogan’s Creek Greenway. I will let UJ fill everyone in on those details since the information is far more likely to get out from his site.

Lastly, Councilwoman Lockett-Felder has agreed to hold ribbon cutting ceremonies at both Liberty Park and Oakland Park. These will be some time in March. Stay tuned for more information. With any Luck, SPAR and the mommies club will hold an event at the opening so all of our little rug-rats can break the new equipment in.

Oh, and don’t be shy to sign up to help clean the medians on March 4^th. With any luck we will have some yummy grub out there.

Bad News

Photo of Schell Park construction
courtsey of UrbanJacksonville.info

We understand that construction has stopped on the nearly completed Schell Park Playground near the corner of West 6th St and Boulevard.

The rumor is that the Parks Maintenance Division was told to stop work due to possible contamination in the area. There are emails out to work out the particulars of this issue.

There is possible contamination south of the Basketball courts where the old “upper pond” used to be. But this is the first we have heard of that area being a concern.

Busy Days

Looking across old lower pond towards Jacksonville skyline

The last few weeks have been busy in the parks. This last week alone we met with the Florida Dept of Environmental Protection, Jacksonville University, and an event planner.

The meeting with DEP was to ascertain whether of not the proposed location for the Rose Arbor in Confederate Park would be affected by any contamination stemming from the Park View Inn location. The short answer is, no. This should eliminate one of the arguments that the Parks and Recreation Dept have given us to not build the arbor.

While speaking of the Hogan’s Creek situation, the representatives from DEP were interested to hear about our two ponds that were filled in. They have asked those of us at the meeting to try to find records or witnesses as to what may have been dumped in the ponds. They seemed interested in the possibility that they may have been used as dumping sites.

At the meeting I was fortunate enough to meet Philip Ramsey. Mr. Ramsey is an event coordinator who has ties to the Uncommon Grounds Café in San Marco. Most recently he was involved in organizing the Tangerine Festival at Memorial Park in Riverside. Mr. Ramsey is part of a group of people who have an interest in starting a public vegetable garden in our area. He also expressed an interest in perhaps trying to plan an event in one of our parks. It should be interesting to see where this relationship goes.

Our meeting with Jacksonville University was to see if some of their chemistry students would like to perhaps use our polluted little creek for some homework. JU has done a lot of testing on the St Johns River, and seems very interested in testing the sediment of our creek for non-biological contaminants. We will keep you up to date on JU’s plans as they become more clear.

Coming up this week we are meeting with Parks and Recreation about Klutho Park. On April 22^nd Historic Springfield will be hosting the Symphony Showcase of Homes, as well as the Designs on Springfield. The Designs on Springfield is an event that will be held in Klutho Park, and will have fun, food, and entertainment for the entire family. I have offered the time of the Parks Task Force to do what can be done to make the park ready for this event. In short, the trash will be picked up, the grass will be mowed, and what ever else we manage to squeeze out of our friends over at parks and recreation.

We also have a meeting scheduled with the City Of Jacksonville regarding the Hogan’s Creek Greenway. For those that are unaware, there is a planned biking, walking, running path planned from Liberty St to 8^th Street along Hogan’s Creek. This is a fully funded project, of which we will learn the details on Wednesday. Stay tuned to this site and UrbanJacksonville for updates on the Hogans Creek greenway plan.

Downtownparks email link now works

A mistake was apparently made when the layout of this blog was created. The email address was supposed to be downtownparks at gmail dot com (Spammer be damned!)

This link is now corrected. If you have tried to email downtownparks before you may have gotten a bounce back, please let me know if you have any questions or input about the work we are doing.

Thanks for your support!

Parks, Parks, Everywhere Parks...

At UrbanJaxs request we have dug up whats happeneing in Schell Park.

As perviously stated, Liberty park is on the fast track to completion. I will let everyone know when the park is set to reopen. Some have suggested that Springfield have a celebration the day it opens. We agree, but are not in the position to organize anything. If anyone is planning to do that, please let us know and we will spread the word.

Along with UrbanJax, we noticed that the Schell Park playground was missing the other day. We have asked about the park many times, but never gotten a comitment to make anything happen. An email to Parks and Rec turned up this answer.

Yes, the playground is being replaced by Park Maintenance therefore the time frame on this project should be completed within the next 2 weeks.

We are also working to get a playground in Klutho Park, when we have details worked out we will let everyone know.

Thanks to UrbanJax for being on the ball, somewhat suprising for a blog getting so little sleep as of late! :-)