Admonitions

I got lost.  I had been here a month or so in the fall of 2001 and was supposed to look at something in Centennial Park.  I couldn’t find a park, so I headed back to City Hall.  I described where I went and was told the collection of mud, gravel, chain link and rusting metal buildings was Centennial Park.

A decade or so goes by and Centennial Park has actual grass and other features of a park.  There’s still some multi-purpose gravel, but that’s going away in phases, replaced by sporting fields, basketball courts, skate and spray parks and hard-surfaced (with bio swales) parking.  The fifty acres is coming along steadily, and the memories of it being a dump are fading.  Young kids frolic at the spraypark, slightly older kids practice determination at the skatepark and the community (and region) turns out for concerts when LeClaire Park isn’t quite big enough. 

Similarly, River Heritage Park is taking shape, returned to the public after hosting sand piles and  a warehouse.  The expansion of LeClaire Park is also moving forward, after a series of determined City Councils and Mayor Gluba fought the monopoly interests which squatted a casino at the foot of Main Street for years.  Across the three parks, more than sixty acres of riverfront property will be returned to public use and / or improved.

It’s all been guided by planning as public as the region has seen.  The RiverVision plan of 2004 set the foundation in place and this year’s update on the plan’s 10th anniversary is continuing the progress.  Dozens of public meetings and thousands of participants and comments have shaped the plans, which have broad public support and as near as universal Council support as can be calculated.  The updated 2014 plan is available on the City's website, while a presentation compiled from a November press briefing and December’s Levee Commission meeting is available here.  The before and after pictures, above, could hardly be more illustrative.  The idea that we’ve avoided a public discussion or somehow haven’t presented depictions of our riverfront moving forward just doesn’t square with facts an editorial author would like to avoid, or may be unaware of.

At the December Levee Commission meeting, Commissioners were in unanimous support of moving from conceptual plans to detailed construction drawings for the expansion of LeClaire Park, so the transformation can begin in 2016 when the casino moves.  The City Council has unanimously supported tearing down the decrepit Dock and replacing it with a multi-use building featuring restaurants, flood improvements and private financing.    

Unanimous support for the grand idea of a more beautiful and vibrant riverfront can get lost in fabricated controversy.  But the City won’t get lost.  We’ll keep improving our riverfront.