Friday, May 1, 2009

Still no answer

Please click on image to ENLARGE view of digging machine inside park at Hill Place apartment development.
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2 comments:

James said...

Not trenching...they are constructing a sidewalk per approved drawings....James

May 5, 2009 at 9:49 AM
Anonymous said...

James, they dug a trench from the road out into the park again that day. My photo shows only the machines sitting there. The machines are inside the park, not where the sidewalk is being built along the street. They worked AGAIN under the canopy of those oaks and where they actually built the sidewalk they cut the roots back more. Go measure the distance from the sidewalk to the tree trunk in the bend. That oak will blow down one windy day with roots extending only a few feet on the east and north sides.
We can agree that it is a city mistake, not the landscape architect's mistake. The city should take the title to land dedicated to be a park before the first square foot of dirt is moved on any project and fence off and protect for the duration.
But certainly, the supervisors on the ground ought to be clearly aware of city ordinances and agreements made before approval. No driver or operator of machine involved in construction should ever work under the canopy of a tree slated to be protected without a qualm.
I always think back to the predawn day in duck season that I was in the favorite breakfast place of thousands of Arkansas duck hunters in Stuttgart and a man recognized me as the outdoor editor of a Little Rock newspaper in the 1980s and invited me to hunt with him that day. I happily accepted and we went to an area off flooded timber. We parked at the edge of the woods and he pointed out a partially flooded field nearby and told me that he had cleared the timber off that land but that the need to make money was the only reason and that he still regretted having to do it to make a living. His all-time favorite deer stand had been in that formerly timbered area.
He mourned the destruction of the Grand Prairie woodlands more than an outsider ever could.
So, yes, those few oaks are all that remain of a magnificent savanna north of my house when I chose to move here 12 or more years ago. But, every few weeks, someone who lived in the mobile-home park under those oaks will stop and talk to me about how wonderful the area was a few years ago and how tough it was to be evicted from that land.
And some who grew up there talk about the land with its wildlife and shady places to play in a way I can't fully relate to, because I knew that many of the mobile homes were not up to code. But they were affordable for their low-wage parents. And they grew up to be hard-working people like their parents.
It would be nice if people considering development actually got to know the people they would be displacing with their projects and if the planning officials, etc., and the politicians would do the same. Not only would they learn how their desire to build affects actual residents but also something about the value of the land.
The was an open prairie parcel between the timbered mobile-home park and the scraggly grove of cedars that were protected near the railroad and the unpaved crossing of the Town Branch under which the huge metal culvert lies where at least a quarter-acre of butterfly milkweed stood in all its glory each summer. There were flower gardens by many of the mobile homes that had been improving for decades. One old couple lived in that park for 29 years before they were evicted for the Aspen Ridge project in 2003.
Not a single person who lived in the three mobile-home parks or in any of the occupied houses standing on that 30 acres could have afforded one of those condos had they been built.
You didn't select the color scheme for those buildings, so this won't offend you. The red walls at the top and the bricks below sort of clash, Mr. Hoodenpyle and I agreed today. But the red does come close to matching his barn.

May 5, 2009 at 9:26 PM

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