recycled : re-raising denny hill
In today’s Post-Intelligencer, Regina Hackett re-hashes [#] Jerry Garcia’s [not of dead Grateful Dead fame] proposal to raise Denny Hill back to its pre-regrade heights. Hackett’s article includes historical photos and provides a reminder that the Garcia’s exhibit at Western Bridge closes on the 12th of August. However, it provides an excuse to re-read what Jen Graves wrote about it a few months ago in one of the year’s best articles in the Stranger:
… he dreamt of elevating its tall 1930s-era trees to a soaring position starting 60 feet in the air. He wanted to transform the dark, hunkered-down spot into the place in the sun that its founders envisioned, while monumentalizing the outrageous land mutation that happened there. [stranger]
The subheadline the P-I story calls the twenty-million dollar price tag for the project “high”, but I’m inclined to agree with Graves’s assessment : “as practical as it is revolutionary”. Her essay is as close as the Stranger has come to finding a bright side in the Mayor’s determination to dig a waterfront tunnel to replace the aging viaduct: Garcia envisions using the original earth, moved from Denny Hill during the regrade, for the walls of his park. We should demand that any multi-billion dollar tunnel proposal include a lineup for dirt-repatriation.
OK, if we shouldn’t be spending $200M on refurbing the Key, why should we spend $20M on raising Denny Park?
$20M would BUY a new park in an area that doesn’t have one. Like, oh, my neighborhood.
Do you really believe that using the “if we’re not spending $200 million dollars on Key Arena, then why should we spend any money on anything else” is a decent standard for civic projects?
Aside from 20 million being a tenth of 200 million, and one being for a public park and the other being for a site for a professional sports team, there are probably lots of other differences between the two projects. But the only one that’s particularly relevant here is that re-creating Denny Park at 60 feet above its current level sounds like the most awesome idea in the universe while refurbishing key arena sounds incredibly dull.
But back to your 200/20 million dollar question: For the price of Key Arena’s refurb, we could have a new park in your neighborhood, a towering Denny park, and 160 million other dollars to scatter around both of the park for kids to swim around in Scrooge McDuck style.