The corner on Ninth and Astor streets along the Columbia River had once been eyed as the site of the Garden of Surging Waves.
But upstaged by a collapsed block in the center of downtown near Astoria City Hall, the garden moved locations, growing larger with the inclusion of Heritage Square.
Little Astor Street park wasn’t needed anymore.
Left alone, it has now become home to the community’s transient population and some illegal activity.
Parks Director Angela Cosby plans to change all of that with a package of improvements. She received the go-ahead to do so on a 3-2 City Council vote Monday night. Council members Arline LaMear, Karen Mellin and Russ Warr voted in favor. Mayor Willis Van Dusen and Councilman Drew Herzig voted against it, with Herzig saying the public was left out of the discussion.
“A list of initial improvements were agreed upon,” City Manager Paul Benoit said, “include cleaning up existing landscaping, adding natural grass turf, irrigation and picnic tables. And with the council’s approval, parks staff would like to start making these initial improvements, and work on agreements with interested parties to adopt that Ninth Street park.”
Adopting the park, he explained, would mean businesses could volunteer to maintain the park throughout the year.
Money is available in the budget for the improvements, he added.
Cosby, along with the parks board, recently held a public meeting in which each attendee was given gameboard “cash” to spend on their priorities for the park.
“I was at that meeting that Angela led and it was really exciting. There were 23 people there, a good cross-section of the community, all stakeholders, all people that were interested,” Mellin said. “She had a very creative way of having us decide which of the items that we wanted to have installed in this park and did it with Monopoly money so we had to put our money where our mouth was.”
She said she wholeheartedly supported the project, to make the park “an enjoyable place to be.”
Herzig argued that the meeting was only for “shareholders,” however, and although he supported the park improvement he would not support what he felt was a lack of a public process.
“I am concerned that we really haven’t had a public presentation on this,” he said. “I would like us to delay a vote on this until the parks can do a public presentation. I know I contacted city staff that this was not a community event, this was an invitation to stakeholders and it got posted on Facebook. So people got involved, but it wasn’t deliberately said to the people of Astoria, ‘These are our plans for the park. What do you think about that?’”
LaMear said it was advertised through other means.
“It was in the paper. People were invited to come, and I thought it was a great meeting,” she said. “There were people there who were not on any kind of special list. They just were regular citizens that showed up. … I think it was advertised and the people that were most interested showed up.”
Van Dusen asked Benoit if a presentation would be possible. He said any presentation wouldn’t be much. “We can put the same thing on the next agenda, but we’re talking about grass, irrigation and benches. Very, very simple maintenance kind of work.”
Van Dusen also asked Cosby what the negatives would be of waiting. She replied the weather could be a factor in delaying it, because the grass needed to be planted before the heavy rains set in.
“We had a park there and the City Council, and the parks department long before Ms. Cosby was here, and we put in a park there that was not very popular,” Van Dusen said of his reasoning for voting no. “All of a sudden, people showed up and saw it and I would hate to repeat a mistake. And the mistake is that we didn’t have enough public process.”
George “Mick” Hague spoke in favor of the project.
“I’ve been talking about Ninth Street for more than a year,” he said. “Ms. Cosby has come on this year and has done an excellent job of pulling together people, and coming up with ideas. I hope the city will follow through on her suggestions.”
Hague suggested the donated artwork given to the city by 85-year-old Massachusetts sculpture Stanley Marcus should be placed in the park. A suggestion box on the first floor of City Hall for the artwork’s placement is available for public input.
“If we clean it up,” Mellin said, “people will treat it with much more respect.”
Speak Your Mind