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.

Design, condescension and movable furniture.

Last week, as it pertains to the design of New Albany's Bicentennial Park by stealth, NAC's Jeff Gillenwater asked Pete Andriot of Rundell Ernstberger Associates a simple, reasonable question:

"When did the public input process into this park's location, imagined functions, design, and construction occur?"

We continue to impatiently tap our feet awaiting Andriot's reply, if any, and Jeff will be posting again on this topic on Tuesday, but in the meantime, I'd like to return to a comment of Andriot's that grates more jarringly with each passing day.

"New Albany isn’t ready for movable tables and chairs yet."

My response:

In the absence of substantive input from New Albany's citizenry, exactly how do you know this?

Did Bob Caesar and Shelle England assure you that the simple, guileless folks in New Albany cannot ever grasp such concepts, or absent any apparent desire to query the general populace, did you even go so far as to ask the tiny non-representative membership of the bicentennial committee itself?

Or, rather, did you glance at the history of the park site and conclude that any city so ineptly willing to decimate a historic post office building and permit the devastated footprint to go perpetually to seed over a period of almost 50 years afterward does not deserve to be considered capable of grasping movable furniture?

At this point, I thought it wise to search "movable furniture," and the very first hit reveals a factoid with which Andriot and his firm might readily (and unfortunately) agree: New York City is the sort of place where they're actually ready for movable furniture (see below).

There, but not here ... okay, so why?

Are we that much dumber, and New Yorkers that much smarter, that we can't even be asked by the designer?

Ahh, but maybe it isn't because ordinary New Albanians don't get it.

Maybe it's because the cadre of top-downers, those same suspects, self-appointed to spoon feed us their conventional white bread wisdom without sharing what passes for reasoning, don't understand movable furniture themselves, and the designer has wisely chosen not to offend his somewhat paymasters (a frightened, hands-off city council ensures they operate sans accountability) by instead casually offending those of us in the general populace: after all, if the powers that be were not going to solicit public input for a $750K project, why the hell would the landscape architect care to do so, either?

I suppose that in this sense, the Bicentennial already has become wonderfully and delightfully New Albany, which is to say, the same tired, congenital, wearisome song and dance.

The Battery Conservancy Americas Design Competition 2012 Invites You to Draw Up Chair

The Battery Conservancy invites students and professionals from the Americas (Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean), to design an iconic moveable outdoor seating element. The winning design will be fabricated for use at The Battery, the 25-acre park at the tip of Manhattan which annually welcomes six million visitors.

Why a Moveable Chair?
As the great urban theorist William Holly Whyte discovered: “Chairs enlarge choice: to move into the sun, out of it, to make room for groups, move away from them. If you know you can move if you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put.” The Battery’s movable chairs will delight while they invite, animating the park and making it Downtown’s central meeting place.