Lordy, Bodeco.

The first time (OK, the first few times) I saw Bodeco, I was as the song below suggests. I was also without legal ID-- at least one that said all those beers were permissible. But don't you worry Dr. Tom Harris, I'll have more than one just for you this evening. And my ID, too.

Rent Boy Park is still a drag. Bodeco never has been. They'll be playing 6-9 pm tonight on the stage we have to rent each week because the three-quarter million dollar corner can't quite seem to facilitate the only events we knew it might host before it was built.

A “skunky country-rockabilly outfit”?

Indeed.

BicenPk dedicated prior to opening concert.

We looked and looked, but the once, former and future Hizzoner was nowhere to be seen.

The new park was blessed with non-ecumenical, purely Christian prayer, which is unfortunate -- but then again, one-way thinking is perhaps the city's chief bicentennial legacy.

There was a strong presence of New Albany police and fire departments, and there's no denying their sharp, professional appearance. Great job, guys.

The Elsby Building makes an imposing backdrop for the new facility. If ever there was a building that should be residential condos, this is it.

Of the comments made yesterday during the dedication, Judge Terry Cody's were by far the best. He did not shirk from referencing past civic errors (including the fact that the park occupies space where a post office building might still be standing), this being a refreshing change, and one incapable of being grasped by luminaries like the bicentennial co-chair persons, seen above in self-congratulatory oratorical mode.

See also: In the weeds (gladly) at the first of twelve Friday concerts at Bicentennial Park.

ON THE AVENUES: Solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one.

ON THE AVENUES: Solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Since those first ominous rumblings in 2011, NA Confidential has devoted numerous column inches to the downtown/top-down urban design feature henceforth to be known as Bicentennial Park, which is to be formally dedicated on Friday night prior to the first of twelve weekly summer concerts.

Helpfully, and in the spirit of civic engagement with which we’ve so long been imbued here at the blog, we’ve suggested alternate names for the park: Somnolent Estates, Caesar’s Folly and Rent Boy Park, among others.

While (Bob) Caesar remains the Roman centurion of contemporary New Albany caricature, devoting his political half-life to guarding the eroded gates and obstructing any sort of progress that cannot be filtered of novel components unfamiliar (and therefore gravely threatening) to his inner homogenized world of caste and respectability, all roads in New Albany still lead to another political figure, albeit one inhabiting the fringes of semi-retirement: The once and future mayor.

This is my roundabout way of saying that I actually agree with Doug England, whose most recent temporary departure from the local governmental stage came in 2011, when he curiously lost his nerve, chose not to run for re-election as kingpin, annoyed his own party by hand-picking a presumed successor from the other one, saw this ballyhooed successor brutally crushed, and then was embarrassingly defeated in a foolhardy council bid by none other than Shirley Baird.

In short, the straw that stirs the drink misplaced his ice cubes, and a city sighed with relief. Surely this would be the end of it?

It appears that lately, perhaps in an effort to stoke bored corpuscles into mounting another bid for supremacy, England has taken to muttering (sometimes when actual living people are standing nearby, as opposed to invisible friends and allies) about his scandalously unrecognized, pivotal role in the advent of Bicentennial Park.

In this specific grievance, the former mayor is completely right.

Given the manner by which the park was conceived and developed, it reads like a random page torn from England’s manual of Governance -101, because posterity will note, even if we seldom recall, that from the very start this quintessentially white bread, old-folks concept for the use of precious community space has been utterly devoid of engagement with the community itself.

Too much was paid to acquire the land, too much insularity shielded the design process, and too much money was spent to build it. This particular park place has been made (again) by the few on purported behalf of the many, with the latter being uninvolved in any substantive way.

New Albany might as well have been Falangist Spain or Tsarist Russia when it comes to the way Bicentennial Park came into being.

Or, more appropriately, our city might have been feudal England.

Come to think of it, that’s exactly what it was.

---

Consider if you will this series of imagined newsfeed tweets from Radio Free New Albany:

• Former NA mayor England to cut the ribbon and dedicate Bicentennial Park to himself at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, June 7.
• City of New Albany announces the Friday dedication ceremony at Bicentennial Park is moved forward to 4:00 pm.
• Former mayor England says his Bicentennial Park self-dedication ceremony will start at 3:30 p.m., and asks when the bars open on Friday.
• Breaking: In official city announcement, Bicentennial Park dedication ceremony moved to Friday morning at 6:30 a.m., before the bars can be open.
• Former Mayor England now says he will dedicate Bicentennial Park to himself at 3:00 a.m. Friday, just following last call from Thursday. He adds that drinks are on him, and they can be carried from Good Times to the park itself, where the port-a-lets he personally designed can double as water fountains.
• In an emergency city council meeting, Dan “Knuckles” Coffey ramrods a new open container law, to come into effect at 2:30 a.m. on Friday. England vows to persevere with Bicentennial Park self-dedication ceremony on Friday morning, promises to run again for mayor to put those bastards in their place, and says he is pricing helicopter rental fees.

---

The scorecard is getting crowded of late. Cafe 27 (a restaurant) and Uptown Art just opened for business. We’re told the fire museum might remain downtown after all, perhaps moving to the old Tabernacle building, and that the Coyle property is about to be sold.

Let’s hope redevelopment comes in the form of market-priced housing of the sort Bob Caesar will permit us to have.

There'll be an occupant (Regalo) for the former Jim's Gun Room at the corner of Pearl and Market, and maybe a Comfy Cow location at 109 E. Market. There is a rumor of a comedy club coming to downtown. The former Happy's and Patticakes are being renovated on the Main Street block between Pearl and Bank, next to Café 27.

The south side of the block remains a disgrace, but at least the north side has improved.

And so it goes.

What connects these varied entities, and the ones already existing as well as the ones to follow? The street and sidewalk grid, that’s what.

However, one-way streets currently functioning as high-speed throughways do nothing to help the prospects for these businesses and attractions. Streets tamed, calmed, made usable by walkers and bikers, and running in both directions, stand to assist in downtown’s ongoing revitalization and that of surrounding neighborhoods.

The former mayor made numerous promises about the street grid during his most recent term, but followed through on very few of them. Ever since, he’s preferred to blame the city council for these failures – but really, how can any ruler such as Franco or Nicholas II, one who regards himself as absolute and answerable only to himself, be justified in whimpering about a legislative body’s recalcitrance?

But we’re more fortunate now, because City Hall during the Jeff Gahan era and our “green” current council are marching forward in perfect harmony toward a better future, so let Doug have credit for the pocket park, and instead, do what he wouldn’t.

Complete the street grid. Now.

Reader sees buried toilets as NAC contemplates "standing" bicentennial metaphors.

C notices that the design for Caesar's Folly (a.k.a., Rent Boy Park) incorporates giant sunken commodes (above). Bluegill sez: "Depending on water flow, they might be bidets." I think the park's architects borrowed the idea from NA Confidential.

These being the community principles we ignore in New Albany.

In New Albany, starting about a year and a half ago, a process was initiated to spend more than a million bucks toward creating a place -- in this instance, a downtown park meant to honor the city's Bicentennial --  conceptually trickling from the top down, as it's always been done, and stewarded by a relatively small group of surely well-meaning persons who nonetheless cannot seem to grasp that the planet is filled with useful ideas, and maybe every now and then, it might be a good thing to be "lower case" democratic about such matters. Unfortunately for the noblesse oblige theory of civic management, our movers and shakers possess too narrow a conceptual vision, which isn't always very obliging. When one's prime objective at every turn is retaining control, it discourages involvement, which in turn becomes the rationale for retaining control: See, no one else can or will do it. It simply isn't true, and I wish "they" could see that.

As an example of what I'm saying, here are eleven principles for creating community spaces. Did any of them feature in the development and implementation of Rent Boy Park?

Eleven Principles for Creating Great Community Places

Didn't think so.

That's my boy.

Park comparisons get worse: Breaking ground on an overpriced copy.

Below is a Rundell Ernstberger Associates rendering of the soon to be Bicentennial Park in New Albany. I've been questioning design decisions and the exorbitant $537,000 construction cost. That elicited a response from REA landscape architect Pete Andriot who, among other things, suggested I check out Canan Commons (built for $708,000 per Andriot) in Muncie, Indiana, to see what other midsize cities are doing with urban parks.

 

The next image is a Rundell Ernstberger Associates rendering of that comparison park, the recently opened Canan Commons. Immediately noticeable is that the shapes and placement in the respective designs are unmistakably similar, if not copied outright. New Albany, apparently, just cut REA a $50,000 check for what's at best a highly derivative design for which Muncie already paid. So much for originality and site and community specificity. That's some grievously bad design karma.

While the aesthetics are nearly identical, the similarities stop there and the differences do not work in New Albany's favor. While Bicentennial Park in New Albany is a small, corner lot of approximately 16,200 square feet, Canan Commons is 1.5 acres or 65,340 square feet. Andriot asked me to consider per square foot cost for park comparisons. In this case, New Albany is paying $33.15 per square foot and Muncie paid $10.84 per square foot. Andriot mentioned the inclusion of fountains in New Albany as a major cost driver at $100,000, but Canan Commons includes a large, covered performance stage (shown below in use) that cost $300,000.

Photo from downtownmuncie.org

Also discussed were drainage issues at the park, with Andriot citing the need for better water handling as a reason for the $40,000 recessed lawn in New Albany. As several know from speaking with me about the park over the past few days, I've expressed confusion as to why digging such an expensive hole - one that in itself will create drainage issues (as evidenced by REA's inclusion of overflows in its design to avoid flooding) - would be better than rain gardens, the construction of which could not only function as a lower cost, run-off solution but as a community-building, environmental education event for the bicentennial as well. 

With a more inclusive and replicable approach to water management in place, substituting the seating afforded by the hole would be both comparatively cheap and changeable as park usage patterns materialize over time. Others suggested that, given the large amount of money we're spending, alternative energy sources might be pursued for the park.

Imagine, then, finding the following text (viewable by clicking the rendering above) from Rundell Ernstberger Associates attached to the documentation of the much less expensive per square foot Canan Commons:

Constructed for approximately $650,000, the park is a showcase for several "green" technologies and components. The majority of the site lighting is powered by wind and solar energy. The pavements within the park are constructed largely of pervious materials, and plantings are comprised of native rain garden species. These systems work together to cleanse stormwater, encourage groundwater recharge, and minimize the amount of stormwater discharge into the local municipal storm sewer systems.

If I'm not mistaken, the official groundbreaking (I suppose the trees didn't count) for Bicentennial Park is this evening at 6:00 p.m.. It's a shame that these and other issues were not earlier addressed via the facilitation of a public input process, but it's not too late to correct our path, include a community whose ideas and resources I'm sure go well beyond mine, and develop a park about which we can be proud instead of accepting an overpriced, lesser developed copy from another town. This bicentennial is as much about the next 200 years as it is the last. We shouldn't start it by settling.