bornagainbiking
Sep 8, 2009, 3:16 PM
What would you suggest?
The Spec
Re: Got ideas for improving Gore Park? (Aug. 29)
How to improve the Gore Park area? Make it "mine," in the same way that I consider other parts of the city mine.
Locke Street, McMaster and Westdale, the waterfront, James Street: they're streetscapes or landscapes that I return to repeatedly even though I live in east Hamilton. I imagine that other Hamiltonians feel the same way. Today the Gore Park area is not ours.
We have effectively ceded the park and surrounding area to patrons of discount stores, beer taverns, tattoo parlours, a bingo parlour, fast-food joints and peep shows -- and, of course, to the seedy souls who make the park virtually their second home anyway.
My Gore Park area would include a bookstore, a music store selling classics and jazz, a museum, a sporting goods-running store, a theatre, cafes and high-end restaurants -- and perhaps a few decent clothing stores for other members of my family. It would be a forum for occasional music festivals, art shows, specialty displays, a photo montage of historical Hamilton.
It would be the kind of place I would be proud to show visitors from out of town.
Today I stopped downtown and asked a bored-looking policeman monitoring the park what he would do with it. He offered a "radical" idea: flatten the park, remove the benches and rocks that provide seating for the undesirables.
I surprised myself with my visceral reaction to the cop's plan. Strip the park, I said, and you do us all a disservice. Leave the park alone. Remake the streetscape around it to bring back the area's true owners.
Despite rarely visiting there, some part of me considers the Gore Park area mine. How many other Hamiltonians feel the same way? And how do we turn that feeling into reality?
Maybe a start would be to attend the planned information sessions tomorrow and offer ideas about the city's Gore master plan.
No, not the city's plan. My plan. Our plan.
:banana: :banana:
The Spec
Re: Got ideas for improving Gore Park? (Aug. 29)
How to improve the Gore Park area? Make it "mine," in the same way that I consider other parts of the city mine.
Locke Street, McMaster and Westdale, the waterfront, James Street: they're streetscapes or landscapes that I return to repeatedly even though I live in east Hamilton. I imagine that other Hamiltonians feel the same way. Today the Gore Park area is not ours.
We have effectively ceded the park and surrounding area to patrons of discount stores, beer taverns, tattoo parlours, a bingo parlour, fast-food joints and peep shows -- and, of course, to the seedy souls who make the park virtually their second home anyway.
My Gore Park area would include a bookstore, a music store selling classics and jazz, a museum, a sporting goods-running store, a theatre, cafes and high-end restaurants -- and perhaps a few decent clothing stores for other members of my family. It would be a forum for occasional music festivals, art shows, specialty displays, a photo montage of historical Hamilton.
It would be the kind of place I would be proud to show visitors from out of town.
Today I stopped downtown and asked a bored-looking policeman monitoring the park what he would do with it. He offered a "radical" idea: flatten the park, remove the benches and rocks that provide seating for the undesirables.
I surprised myself with my visceral reaction to the cop's plan. Strip the park, I said, and you do us all a disservice. Leave the park alone. Remake the streetscape around it to bring back the area's true owners.
Despite rarely visiting there, some part of me considers the Gore Park area mine. How many other Hamiltonians feel the same way? And how do we turn that feeling into reality?
Maybe a start would be to attend the planned information sessions tomorrow and offer ideas about the city's Gore master plan.
No, not the city's plan. My plan. Our plan.
:banana: :banana: