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Civic Center Boondoggle
Aug. 31st, 2006 11:31 amAlready the spin from the city is starting so they can waste money on a project that won't provide the benefits they claim. They are calling Civic Center a haven for vagrants and drug deals. That something needs to be done so it isn’t a barrier between downtown and the Golden Triangle. They say by adding a giant water feature, a couple glass boxes, an ultra modern light/sculpture, and a pedestrian bridge designed by Libeskind will bring people back to the park.
I very much doubt it.
I am willing to offer 10 to 1 odds that building this stuff in the Civic Center won't actually attract any more visitors. Civic Center is surrounded on three sides by offices and on the forth by a museum and a library. No one goes there on a regular basis because no one lives there. In New York the reason that Central Park gets used is that many of those buildings around it are apartments.
If there were a constant and visible police presence to keep the drug deals away and something were done to throw a drop cloth over the homeless problem, then Civic Center might be used by a few city or state employees having their lunch. Heck a few museum visitors might even forgo eating at the museum restaurant to have a picnic in the park. But overall the problem that keeps people away is there aren't any people around there and it isn't convenient to stop around there. There isn't parking and face it, Denver is a car centered city. There are busses enough, but how many people are going to hop a bus to go downtown to a park when they have lots of parks closer to home?
Now going on to the design, I don't like the giant water feature. I think, like most water features, it won't work as well as advertised. Water features tend not to and because this is Denver and we're constantly short of water and have lots of freeze thaw cycles to break things. I also don't like the design in general because I think it clashes in an unharmonious way with the classical Greek architecture in the park. What is there now isn't particularly fantastic architecture as Greek Revival stuff of the early 20th Century goes, but it should be worked with rather than just sticking in something in as modern a style as possible.
Changing Skyline Park didn't actually get rid of the problems that caused people not to use it, I hope the people of Denver won't let them be boondoggled by this silly proposal.
I very much doubt it.
I am willing to offer 10 to 1 odds that building this stuff in the Civic Center won't actually attract any more visitors. Civic Center is surrounded on three sides by offices and on the forth by a museum and a library. No one goes there on a regular basis because no one lives there. In New York the reason that Central Park gets used is that many of those buildings around it are apartments.
If there were a constant and visible police presence to keep the drug deals away and something were done to throw a drop cloth over the homeless problem, then Civic Center might be used by a few city or state employees having their lunch. Heck a few museum visitors might even forgo eating at the museum restaurant to have a picnic in the park. But overall the problem that keeps people away is there aren't any people around there and it isn't convenient to stop around there. There isn't parking and face it, Denver is a car centered city. There are busses enough, but how many people are going to hop a bus to go downtown to a park when they have lots of parks closer to home?
Now going on to the design, I don't like the giant water feature. I think, like most water features, it won't work as well as advertised. Water features tend not to and because this is Denver and we're constantly short of water and have lots of freeze thaw cycles to break things. I also don't like the design in general because I think it clashes in an unharmonious way with the classical Greek architecture in the park. What is there now isn't particularly fantastic architecture as Greek Revival stuff of the early 20th Century goes, but it should be worked with rather than just sticking in something in as modern a style as possible.
Changing Skyline Park didn't actually get rid of the problems that caused people not to use it, I hope the people of Denver won't let them be boondoggled by this silly proposal.