[Durham INC] let's help the City with ideas...

[Randy Pickle]

I eliminated (as Bill put it) my park because at times, I refer to it as
Lake Beverly because it is all under water. You can have a canoe rental
business in my front yard. I am much more familiar with the parks I
mentioned than the others. But I have personally visited around 50 of the
ones we have; some more frequently than others.

There are 7 parks withing 2 miles of where I live. Does that seem like too
many? One is as Mike mentioned, the size of a vacant house lot. Within 4
miles of where I live, it jumps to 13 parks. It's almost as if every
neighborhood at one time had it's own park.

The bath house at Northgate functions as seasonl. They turn the water off
sometime in Oct. and on again after the chance of freezing is over. It's
tied to the dog park water system, so we don't have water for the dog park
during this time frame either...

The house at Northgate Park that Bill referred to is uninhabitable. As I was
told, it has a fuzzy covering of mold throughout. Maybe you could gut it to
the framework and sort of start over, but where are the funds coming from to
do that? Forest Hills has an apartment attached to the clubhouse. Typically
it has been rented to Police officers, but I think it's vacant now. Duke
Park has one as well. It's the house the golf course maintenance division
operates out of (below the bath house). Most of the older parks had
something for the park caretaker to live in. Now City services (or
contractors) take care of the parks.

Another desirable park for redevelopment is at the end of Garrett Rd. It
mainly houses the tennis courts that the school system uses. Most of that
would be prime commercial development with what has been built around it.
It, like many of our parks, are not "neighborhood" parks. Most of the
visitors/use they get has to travel there by car/bike/bus/etc. There's no
reason they couldn't just drive to the next closest park instead...

Bill's right. Don't send your ideas to. Just post them here. perhaps it will
be like the open source software conversation where someone else on the list
has some additional thoughts (one way or the other). Most of this list is
involved in this community and gets to see first hand what seems to work and
what doesn't. Perhaps what doesn't work is a corner we can improve upon
(budget-wise or otherwise).

RWP
27 Beverly
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